Bitcoin Active Addresses Drop Nearly 40%, Signaling Retreat in Short-Term Speculative Demand

Bitcoin network activity has slowed sharply in recent weeks.

On May 25, cryptocurrency analyst Ali Martinez wrote on X that the number of active Bitcoin addresses fell about 39.8% over the past two weeks, to roughly 494,000 from about 821,000.

Martinez said weaker network activity during a price correction or sideways trading period is often interpreted as a sign that short-term speculative capital is leaving the market. The current trend suggests so-called weak hands are scaling back their participation, while supply is shifting toward investors with a stronger long-term holding bias.

Active addresses are an on-chain metric that measures the number of wallets that participated in actual transactions over a given period. A decline in that figure is generally viewed as a sign that short-term trading momentum is cooling.