Despite the volatile price movements, there is good news for BTC adoption.
Crypto research firm Santiment has identified network data that shows that Bitcoin adoption is increasing despite the market’s weak state.
Sentiment’s findings showed that not only is Bitcoin adoption growing, but so is cold storage. Investors are increasingly sending their bitcoins (BTC) to offline storage platforms, a pattern commonly seen among users who intend to hold for the long term.
Bitcoin adoption is growing
According to Sentiment’s tweet, the number of empty individual wallets on the Bitcoin network has reached an all-time high of 58.45 million. This indicator witnessed an increase of 1.69 million in six months, which reflects a growth of 3%. Such an increase shows that more investors are buying and holding BTC over the past few months, regardless of the price drop and the onset of the bear market.
In addition, the amount of BTC in known exchange wallets is at its lowest level since December 2017. At the moment, such wallets hold only 1.17 million BTC.
The growing adoption and shift to offline storage reflects a trend toward “thick buying” among investors. Both retail and institutional investors are accumulating digital assets; but at a low speed. Institutional investors seem to have accumulated more funds than their retail counterparts.
Earlier this month, Crypto potato reported last week that Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the US recorded their first major wave of accumulation since mid-October 2025, while retail turnover fell. As ETF inflows totaled $1.45 billion on Feb. 25, data shared by analysts showed a $5 billion drop in retail inflows over the 30-day period from Feb. 6 to March 2.
True collecting creates demand
Meanwhile, in the midst of war tensions, demand is also increasing. Despite geopolitical uncertainty rocking markets, investors and institutional investors are still buying. Part of the demand can also be traced to American investors, as seen in Coinbase Premium, which turned positive after a long negative streak.
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Data from the derivatives market also shows that demand is driven by genuine accumulation rather than speculative activity resulting from trading in used leverage. This demand pushed spot BTC back above $70,000 for the first time in three weeks. At the time of writing, the leading crypto asset was trading around $70,560, down slightly over the past 24 hours.
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