Accumulation
A quiet phase where informed buyers build positions at low prices, often before a broader uptrend.
Accumulation is a market phase — typically after capitulation and during the apathy of a bear market — where patient buyers steadily build positions while price moves sideways and public interest is dead. It’s the unglamorous groundwork that often precedes the next uptrend.
On-chain, accumulation appears as coins flowing from short-term to long-term holders, rising conviction in HODL waves, and sustained exchange outflows. The difficulty is that accumulation and continued decline look identical in real time, which is why disciplined strategies like DCA tend to outperform trying to perfectly time the bottom. Its counterpart at the top is distribution.