Bitcoin (BTC) regained $ 69 thousand in the new week and the intensification of peace-themed statements may open the door to new peaks in the coming days. This week we will see the release of the 2 most important reports regarding US inflation, CPI and PCE. There is a Fed meeting next week so volatility will be high throughout the week. So what are the reserves of cryptocurrency exchanges?
Cryptocurrency Exchange Reserves
We wrote in February that many crypto companies went bankrupt and stopped operating. in cryptocurrencies The lack of liquidity has now left companies in despair even for 2026, so they are throwing in the towel. However, the days when despair reaches its peak are the periods when hopes for a return must sprout. Experienced investors are aware of this.
BTC reserves on exchanges have already fallen to 2019 lows. Since 2022, held on exchanges BTC reserveshas been steadily decreasing, a trend largely triggered by the collapse of FTX. The chart below shared by Darkfost shows that exchanges have been abandoned. In November 2022 alone, more than 325,000 BTC disappeared from the exchange’s reserves.
Today, exchange reserves are back to levels seen in 2019, around 2.7 million BTC, with around 20% held by Binance among all centralized exchanges accessible to retail investors.
“If we include platforms used by professional investors, Coinbase Advanced ranks first with approximately 800,000 BTC.
This figure is still approximately 200,000 BTC less than the figure in July 2025.
– Apart from the FTX incident, which has pushed many investors to hold their assets in private wallets rather than on centralized exchanges, there are two other important factors that have contributed to reserves returning to 2019 levels. –
The first major factor was the launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs in January 2024. At that time, BTC reserves on exchanges were still over 3.2 million. Today, ETFs hold approximately 1.3 million BTC, representing approximately 6.7% of the total supply, effectively removing this amount from exchange liquidity.” – Darkfost
Another important factor is the growth experienced by treasury companies. Their total assets reached 1.1 million BTC, or 5% of the supply.
Structural Change and the Future Taurus
On the stock exchanges BTC amount will not return to its former peaks. The reason for this is the motivation of the “new investor group” in both the ETF channel and the treasury company to invest in isolation from the stock markets. In addition to its many beneficial effects, such as the decrease in stock market-based speculative movements and the narrowing of stock market sales supply, this structural change gives us another piece of good news. The investor profile is changing.
In previous cycles, investors looking at the hands of whales saw prices move much more speculatively. But 5% of the supply is held by treasury companies that say they never plan to sell. The remaining part of the huge Bitcoin supply belongs to the ETF investor, who can act very calmly.
ETH ETFs Although it saw billions of dollars in inflows last year, it has seen sales of around half of the inflows to date. If last year’s inflows were made by individual investors through stock exchanges, we could see an ETH price of thousands of dollars today with larger outflows.
In other words, structural change is very supportive in preventing us from seeing scary bear markets from now on. Moreover ETF and the growing demand on the treasury side will cause sales supply to gradually shrink in the long run. this too RWA And payment infrastructure As its story grows stronger, it may open the door to a scenario where public networks grow with Bitcoin. RWA, which has already exceeded $20 billion, has increased 4 times compared to last year. If it continues at this rate, public networks may even exceed the $100 billion threshold within 1 year. Then, belief in the trillion-dollar size targeted by 2030 will increase.
So what will be the result? Every bull market needs a story. This combination of structural change, RWA, payment infrastructure could give us the next bull story.
But what we need is the normalization of the world. Between tariffs, global inflation, the Fed’s delayed monetary expansion, cryptocurrencies began to experience a half-baked bull in late 2024 and 2025, amid liquidity that did not enter the risk market. Even though the conditions were not favourable, US crypto support reached new heights. Now with conditions becoming supportive we should see a true bull market. If Trump stops making bad surprises, this process could begin in mid-2026. However, in the opposite scenario, this should start by the end of 2026, after the midterm elections.
