For some time now, a somewhat alarming idea has been circulating on social media: that a supply shock in Bitcoin is imminent — that soon there won’t be enough Bitcoin for everyone. But is this really true?
From an On-Chain perspective, the metric Bitcoin: Exchange Reserve – All Exchanges over the past year shows that, since November 11, 2024, the reserves held across all CEXs have plummeted from 2,942,077 BTC to 2,490,318 BTC as of April 28, 2025 (the last verification day).
See Chart 1
As we can see, the trend is clearly downward. During this same period, BTC reserves on exchanges have decreased by 451,719 BTC.
At the same time, we can observe that Bitcoin’s Realized Capitalization has increased from $669.320 billion to $883.025 billion. Therefore, during this period, Realized Cap has grown by $213.704 billion.
See Charts 2 and 3
As the price rises, each Bitcoin becomes more expensive. Therefore, if approximately 500,000 BTC entered active buying, it’s very likely that the price would surge dramatically, reaching at least $130,000 or even $140,000.
And this is where some often-overlooked actors come into play: the miners. They currently hold 1,808,548.46 BTC.
See Charts 4
If the price were to rise to $130,000 or $140,000, it’s highly likely that miners would significantly increase their BTC sales. This behavior could counteract the decline in exchange reserves, since historically, miners tend to sell more as the price goes up. So even if reserves keep falling, a price surge would likely encourage enough selling to partially offset that drop.
The conclusion is clear: IT IS HIGHLY UNLIKELY that BTC supply will be exhausted during this current cycle or that a true supply shock will occur, since it would require an enormous influx of capital — enough to push Bitcoin’s Realized Capitalization to at least 3 or 4 times its current value.
Although scarcity is a powerful narrative, the data shows that we are still far from a true supply shock.
by Carmelo Alemán
Written by Carmelo_Alemán
