81% of Bitcoin Has Not Moved in Six Months, River's Data Shows

River Financial put the figure at 81%. In a newsletter dated 23 September, the Bitcoin brokerage said that share of the circulating supply had not moved in at least six months. That leaves roughly 3.7 million coins doing all the trading, out of about 19.7 million in existence. Two outlets picked the number up over the following three days, and both traced it back to the same River newsletter. No independent on-chain tracker published a matching six-month reading before this article went out.

"More than four out of every five Bitcoin in existence haven't budged in at least six months," River said in the newsletter.

What the numbers say

The arithmetic needs a note. Coinpedia, carrying the figure on 26 September, put the dormant pile at 16.3 million BTC. Against a 19.7 million circulating supply that works out to about 83%, not 81%. Crypto Briefing's version of the same data, 3.7 million coins active, implies roughly 16 million dormant instead. The two dormant totals do not reconcile. We could not establish which rounding River itself used. What both outlets lead with is the percentage, and that is the number the brokerage published.

Who bought and who sold

The dormancy reading sits on top of a longer accumulation record. Long-term holders have added more than 3 million BTC since 2020, River said. About 300,000 BTC moved out of long-held cohorts in the first half of 2026, which is the counter-current in the same data set. Retail went both ways inside the year: net selling of 140,000 BTC through June, then 107,000 BTC bought back in the third quarter. Wallets holding between 100 and 1,000 coins, the cohort River calls dolphins, have taken on more than 113,000 BTC since mid-July.

An aging signal, not proof of demand

Dormancy data has a known limit, and it was spelled out a week before River's newsletter landed. CryptoSlate, publishing on 20 September against Maketo figures from 18 September, noted that 63.3% of the supply last moved at least a year ago. That is a different band and a lower number. Editor-in-chief Liam Wright argued the band fills passively. "Coins that last moved roughly a year ago can enter the one-to-two-year bracket simply by remaining still long enough to cross the boundary," he wrote. Last-movement age cannot separate a holder who decided to sit from an entity shuffling coins between its own wallets, or from coins whose keys are lost. Wright's conclusion was that the rising wave is an aging signal rather than proof of new demand.

What a thinner float does next

A smaller active supply matters only where it meets demand, and the demand side was busy in the same week. Spot Bitcoin ETFs took $134.51 million in net inflows on the day Coinpedia wrote, part of a week worth about $2.6 billion, and flows turned positive for the year after a six-day run. Price did not follow in a straight line. Bitcoin slipped under $84,000 on 24 September and was trading near $83,970 two days later, having approached $87,385 shortly before. The book was thin on both sides: about $37 million in sell orders between $85,122 and $87,000, against $21.1 million in buys between $82,000 and $83,500.

River also disclosed its own books, 33,737 BTC in reserves against 33,499 BTC in customer liabilities. The six-month clock keeps running on every coin that stays put, so the share can climb without anyone buying anything. What would settle the argument is an independent tracker publishing the same band on the same date. None had by the time of writing.