2019 was the year of hodling. 10.7 million bitcoins remained untouched and stored on accounts without any movements. It is the highest level of untouched BTC since 2017.

According to Digital Assets Data, the fintech company engaged in creating solutions for cryptocurrency data, appriximately 10.7 million bitcoins did not move from their addresses for more than 12 months. Given that by January 2020, 18.14 million bitcoins were mined, almost 60% of bitcoins simply remained untouched in 2019, and only 40% of the mined coins participated in any transactions. This is the largest share of inactive bitcoins since the beginning of 2017.

“The sheer size of unmoved bitcoin is definitely a sign of the developing community of HODLers,” Kadan Stadelmann, chief technology officer at Komodo Platform, told CoinDesk.

Crypto investors prefer to follow the hodling tactics probably due to the fact that they expect more significant increase in prices after the halving in the bitcoin blockchain scheduled for May 2020. The fee for mined block in the bitcoin blockchain reduces by half every four years, thereby controlling inflation in the network.

Another reason for the growing number of bitcoins lying without movement may be that a significant part of hodlers acquired cryptocurrency in 2017 during peak prices. Thus, they are still in the red zone and wait for the price of bitcoin to rise in order to return at least to their original positions.

“Many investors are potentially still underwater with bitcoin that was purchased at higher prices in 2017 and 2018,” said Kevin Kaltenbacher of Digital Assets Data.

The statistics show that 39 crypto addresses hold around 11.1% of bitcoin's supply.