Long-term bitcoin holders can sell their holdings to switch to exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and to diversify their cryptocurrency portfolios, says Dr. Martin Hesboki, head of research at cloud financial services platform Uphold.

“There are several reasons why crypto holders are selling in OG,” Hesbock said on Sunday. “The first thing is to buy them back into ETFs, which offer incredible tax advantages under the current rules, especially in the US.”

“The second reason is that they realized that the real revolution is not Bitcoin but Blockchain, which is used in every industry. Hence there are many other projects that promise greater returns than Bitcoin, which still lack a widespread use case.”

Early Bitcoin (BTC) arbitrage trader Owen Gunden was among the latest to transfer his holdings of 11,000 bitcoins to the exchange, with a final transfer of 3,549 coins on Sunday, according to Lookonchain.

Several long-term Bitcoin whales also woke up after years of dormancy this year and sold their holdings, including a Satoshi-era Bitcoin whale with 80,000 BTC, which had been inactive for 14 years before it started moving around its massive stash in July.

Bitcoin is a more mature asset now

Bitcoin's compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is decreasing, suggesting it is moving away from being a high-growth asset to being used “as a hedge against the failure of traditional financial and securities systems,” Hesbock said.

Bitcoin's compound annual growth rate over the past four years has steadily declined and fell into single digits for the first time in April. As of November 10, it was around 13%, according to Bitbo.

“This maturity is accelerated by events such as the launch of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, which bring in significant institutional capital that is generally less volatile than retail-led speculative flows, thus dampening extreme price volatility and contributing to a lower, more stable growth rate,” Hesbock said.

“The goal for maturing assets is for their volatility to also decline, which some sources suggest will happen, to maintain a competitive risk-adjusted return.”

Related to: Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Sell-off Reminiscent of Post-2000 Dot-com Crash: Analyst

Macro analyst Jordi Visser suggested earlier this month that Bitcoin is in an initial product offering phase, with original owners rotating and new traders acquiring tokens, thus expanding distribution.

The next stage is not about Bitcoin versus altcoins

Hesbock also argues that the distinction between Bitcoin and altcoins is no longer relevant, as the space is constantly evolving, and it would be better to abandon old rivalries and focus on projects “that will change the world and avoid those that are likely to fail.”