Conventional wisdom says that seasoned stockholders don’t sell into weakness. They accumulate through withdrawals, reap gains during euphoria, and sit still while newer groups move in.
Late 2025 will test this model. Defeat Ethereum, XRPAnd pockets of the DeFi stack, sleeping whales move supply to exchanges as medium-term buyers flee, creating a bifurcated distribution pattern that reveals assets with real depth on a cost basis that remain overloaded by new entrants.
Distribution without surrender
What makes this moment special is not the fact of the sale, as veterans always take turns, but the timing and composition.
Ethereum whales amassed 460,000 ETH with the price falling below $3,200 in mid-November, however. Santiment The measure of consumer age has slowed rather than risen.
This difference is important: If there are fewer very old coins moving around as overall whale balances rise, the pressure comes from holders in range-trimming positions from three to ten years rather than flooding ICO-era portfolios.
Vitreous node The data shows that those medium-term groups are selling their products Approximately 45,000 ETH per daya measured pace that contrasts with the panic-induced rallies seen earlier in the year when short- and long-term holders exited simultaneously.
XRP tells the opposite story. The group’s 365-day dormant cycle has risen to its highest level since July, as whales move their months-long possessions to… Binanceand reactivate the supply that was untouched during the previous rally.
Cryptoquant The 100-day simple moving average of the whale-to-stock flow measure peaked on November 6, indicating a multi-month uptrend and indicating that the distribution is structural rather than contingent.
When this is coupled with the reactivation of dormant supply across ranges of more than one year and three to twelve months, the pattern is clear: XRP’s 2025 moves have systematically attracted older coin holders who had waited for the consolidation and now see exits as a rational trade.
Although the flow of whale exchanges has declined, it is still among the highest levels on record in 2025.
The trade-off involved in these flows is clear and straightforward. Ethereum whales are circling, and older holders are selling aggressively as new buyers come in with higher cost bases, building a high realized cap even as the price consolidates.
Whales distribute XRP into a market where latecomers are already holding most of the cap achieved at high prices, leaving no absorption cushion if spot demand continues to fade.
Maximum achieved as structural information
The realized cap measures the total cost basis of all currencies, weighted by the price at which they last moved. For assets that have built real cost-based ladders over multiple cycles, the achieved cap acts as a long-term support.
For assets that have printed most of the maximum achieved in a single blow, the structure is fragile: when you sell the top lot, there is little left at the bottom.
Ethereum’s cap hit reached $391 billion as of November 18. According to Santimentabsorbing distribution from older holders via new inflows even as prices fall sideways.
This continued accumulation at various entry points means that the network maintains diversification on a cost basis, and short-term holders will be more vulnerable if another decline occurs, but the veteran cohorts shrinking at $3,200 do not collapse the entire structure because new entrants have filled the gap at intermediate levels.
XRP’s realized cap nearly doubled from $30 billion to $64 billion during the late 2024 rally, with $30 billion of that coming from buyers who entered in the past six months.
By early 2025, coins less than 6 months old accounted for 62.8% of the maximum realized, up from 23%, with the cost basis concentrated at the highest levels of the cycle. Glassnode’s realized profit-to-loss ratio has trended downward since January, indicating that new entrants are now realizing losses rather than gains.
When whales send old coins to exchanges in November, reactivating dormant supply at the same moment that latecomers sink in, the capped imbalance becomes the central vulnerability.
Stillness as a key indicator
Dormancy metrics track when a previously dormant supply returns to active trading. Rakes in these indicators do not automatically indicate tops, but rather indicate regime change.
When holders who have survived previous cycles decide that conditions justify an exit, their move often precedes the broader distribution because they operate on longer time horizons and larger position sizes than retail groups.
The spikes in Ethereum consumption in September and October came from ICO-era wallets finally making a move after years of inactivity, but these moves occurred out of force rather than panic.
By mid-November, as whales holding between 1,000 and 100,000 ETH had accumulated over 1.6 million ETH, the spent age meter had calmed down, meaning that the heavy inflows were driven by rotation of large holders rather than the surrender of old wallets.
This creates a floor: If older groups are not selling and medium-term whales are buying, immediate absorption can handle profit taking measured from the three to ten year range.
The XRP dormancy pattern has broken in the other direction. 365-day dormant trading has reached levels not seen since July, with recurring red highs as older currencies wake up and move to exchanges.
Reactivations became more frequent as the price struggled to stay above $2, suggesting that holders who stayed during the consolidation period decided that the risk-reward no longer justified their patience.
When dormant spikes coincide with weak spot demand and realized caps, the signal is unmistakable: veterans are distributing into a market that cannot absorb them without breaking price support.
Who carries the bag?
If Ethereum distribution continues at the current pace, with three- to ten-year ETH holders selling 45,000 ETH per day while whales accumulate and make capital gains, the result is a market with higher long-term support but increased short-term volatility.
New entrants priced between $3,000 and $3,500 become marginal sellers if the price drops lower, while veteran cohorts sit on unrealized gains large enough to ride out another pullback.
If dormant supply of XRP continues to be reactivated while the realized cap remains concentrated among holders with holdings for six months or more, the path narrows.
Each wave of seasoned distribution pushes new buyers further down. Because these new buyers represent the majority of the realized cap, giving them up would collapse the cost basis floor rather than simply test it.
The risk is self-reinforcing: whales distribute, latecomers sell at losses, the realized cap falls, and the next group of bondholders faces a weaker support structure.
For protocols such as ghostas dorm data remains sparse, one headline crystallizes $1.54 million in losses through selling 15,396 AAVE into forced downtrend signals or exits driven by fear of new entrants, not long-term holders reaping the gains.
When these losses occur while assets are trading below all major moving averages and broader DeFi risk appetite deteriorates, late-cycle capital exits rather than rolls in.
Who decides the word?
The key question is whether the reactivations of dormant supply in this cycle represent a healthy rotation, the exit of veteran equity holders with profits as new capital comes in with higher bases, or the beginning of a broader deleveraging process as realized caps that hold weight under sustainable distribution collapse.
Ethereum data indicates that legacy coins are on the move. However, the bulk of the recent inflow is from shrinking medium-term whales rather than dumping old portfolios, and the high cap achieved confirms the continuation of new money on average.
XRP data indicates that dormant rallies attract holders of the coin for more than one year, while 62.8% of the maximum achieved falls with buyers who entered in the last six months.
The result depends on which group flashes first. If new entrants hold and spot demand stabilizes, veteran distribution is absorbed, and the market builds a higher floor through turnover.
If the latecomers surrender before the seasoned sellers exhaust themselves, the realized maximum will fall, the depth of the cost basis will evaporate, and the next support level will be well below the current price.
Whales are moving. Whether it’s a turnover or a defeat depends on who’s left to get what they’re selling.
