A new Santiment snapshot circulated by Cointelegraph on May 18 puts the number of wallets holding at least 100 BTC at 20,229, an 11.2% increase from a year ago. The growth has continued through a week of softer prices, with bitcoin trading near $77,182 and down roughly 5.4% over the past seven days as of May 19, 2026.
The cohort keeps growing while spot weakens
The 100+ BTC bucket is a useful proxy for high-conviction holders. At today's price, the threshold is worth about $7.7 million per address, which filters out most retail traders and surfaces a mix of long-term individual holders, custodial wallets, exchange hot or cold storage, and some treasury entities.
Santiment's count rising 11.2% over the past 12 months means roughly 2,000 net new addresses crossed that threshold during a period that included two sharp drawdowns, a record liquidation event, and a steady stream of ETF outflows. The cohort growth does not by itself prove accumulation, since the same coins can move between wallets, but a sustained year-over-year increase usually points to fresh balances rather than reshuffling.
A divergence from the ETF tape
The on-chain picture sits awkwardly next to the regulated product flows. US spot bitcoin ETFs shed about $1 billion in the past week on inflation concerns, with names like IBIT and FBTC posting consecutive red days. Allocators on the registered side are reducing exposure or rotating into shorter-duration instruments.
On-chain wallet growth tells a different story. While ETF holders sell paper claims, a separate population is moving size into self-custody or institutional cold storage at the address level. Both flows can be true at once: ETF investors trim while sovereign, corporate, and high-net-worth holders use the dip to add. The Santiment number does not separate those categories, but the direction of the trend is consistent with accumulation behavior reported by Strategy's recent 24,869 BTC purchase and the 369,000 BTC added to public-company treasuries over the past 12 months.
Reading the data carefully
A few caveats matter before drawing strong conclusions:
Exchanges and custodians are part of the count. A single Coinbase, Binance, or Fidelity cold wallet holding tens of thousands of BTC counts as one address. When custodians shuffle inventory between hot and cold storage, the cohort number can move without any underlying buyer activity. Santiment's methodology does try to label known exchange clusters, but coverage is imperfect.
The threshold is fixed in coins, not dollars. At $77,000 per BTC the bar is much lower than it was at the November 2024 highs near $100,000. Some addresses that crossed the 100 BTC line over the past year may have done so via price appreciation on existing holdings rather than fresh purchases. The 11.2% growth still implies net accumulation given how the cohort is calculated, but the magnitude is softer than the headline suggests.
Wallet count is not the same as supply held. The number of addresses can rise while total BTC in the cohort stays flat or falls if larger holders split their stacks across new wallets for operational or security reasons. The combined supply held by 100+ BTC wallets is the more meaningful figure for absolute accumulation, and that data is not in the Santiment snapshot circulated today.
The price context
As of May 19, 2026, BTC sits at $77,182 with a 24-hour change of +0.22%. ETH is at $2,139, up 1.51% on the day, and the broader Fear and Greed Index reads 40, in Neutral territory after weeks closer to Fear. The market is not pricing in panic, but it is not pricing in conviction either.
That makes the wallet-cohort growth more notable. The 100+ BTC count has continued to climb through both the optimistic and pessimistic phases of the past year, suggesting a steady bid from holders who care more about long-horizon positioning than weekly price action. The reverse can also be true: if the cohort starts shrinking even as price recovers, that would be a sharper sell signal than a green daily candle.
Overview
Santiment counts 20,229 BTC wallets holding at least 100 coins as of May 18, 2026, up 11.2% over the past year. The growth has continued through a week where bitcoin fell roughly 5% to $77,182 and US spot ETFs bled around $1 billion. Methodology caveats apply: custodial clusters, fixed coin thresholds, and address splitting can all distort the count. Even so, the direction of the trend is consistent with on-chain accumulation by larger holders while regulated wrappers see redemptions. The two flows can coexist, and right now they are.
