As new demand enters the market in the later stage of the bull cycle, long-term holders sell bitcoin to new market entrants, i.e., short-term holders, until the market selling and buying is exhausted. This typically signals the local market price top as new demand is eager to buy at any price. Price then cools off and long-term holders start accumulating again.
Over the summer, as the bitcoin price fell over 50%, bitcoin entered a mini-bear-market-type environment where long-term holders took the opportunity to stack supply at a rate that we havent seen happen before during a bull cycle.
This behavior propelled the long-term holder supply to new all-time highs as long-term holders now anticipate higher prices expecting new retail, institution and futures ETF demand to come into the market. Now, were still seeing long-term holders add to their holdings, but at a slightly decelerating rate compared to earlier in the summer