The Most Profitable Cycle for Bitcoin OGs – ETFs and Treasury Companies Have Absorbed Their Sales

The latent profits of Binance traders have nearly tripled compared to the peak of 2021

Since the low point reached by Bitcoin in 2023, long-time holders have gradually taken their profits while new buyers entered the market. However, the rise was not primarily financed by traders on crypto platforms, as seen in previous cycles.

In an analysis published on X, Ki Young Ju, founder of CryptoQuant, estimates that Bitcoin spot ETFs and Treasury Companies have this time absorbed a large portion of the sales from the "OGs," those traders and holders who have been around since Bitcoin's early years.

According to him, some former traders had opened significant long positions when BTC was around $16,000 in 2023. In June of that year, Ki Young Ju notably identified a long position attributed to a whale on Huobi, opened around $16,819.

After the rise of BTC, these positions would have generated the most profitable cycle ever recorded by this category of actors. The demand from ETFs and treasury companies would have simultaneously allowed traders on Binance to accumulate latent profits far exceeding those of the previous cycle.

The contrast with 2021 is particularly visible in the previous graph. The ratio peaked between 0.5 and 0.6 during the previous bull market, compared to nearly 1.5 in 2025. The deposit addresses tracked by CryptoQuant thus temporarily benefited from a level of latent profit nearly 3 times higher.

Since then, this advantage has almost entirely dissipated, with the ratio now hovering near 0, suggesting that this category of addresses has returned to around its average acquisition price.

In March, we already observed that BTC sold by several historical whales was quickly absorbed by institutions.

The CryptoQuant graph today provides a measure of the scale of profits accumulated during this redistribution, but it does not trace any direct sales between the OGs and the ETFs. Instead, it highlights two phenomena observed during the same cycle: a growing institutional demand and record latent profits on addresses linked to Binance.

The arrival of this institutional demand has not prevented excesses from forming. According to Ki Young Ju, part of the latent profits accumulated during the rise would have been used to strengthen leveraged positions on futures contracts.

To measure this phenomenon, CryptoQuant compares the open interest of BTC/USDT contracts, which is the value of positions still open, to the reserves in USDT present on exchanges. The higher this ratio increases, the more significant the volume of open positions becomes relative to the available capital to support them.

The indicator exceeded 0.5 at the peak of the cycle before returning to around 0.3. The market has thus partially deleveraged, but its level of leverage remains higher than that observed before the arrival of Bitcoin spot ETFs.

New peaks in the ratio between market price purchases and sales have reportedly appeared on OKX and other platforms. Ki Young Ju sees this as a possible return of large traders to bullish positions, without considering these movements as confirmation of a bottom.

If flows to the ETFs resume sustainably, they could again support the price while encouraging a rise in leverage in the futures markets. Institutions have changed the identity of buyers capable of absorbing the sales from the OGs, but not the market's dependence on speculation.

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