There is no way to measure the amount of bitcoins (BTC), which is still being sent to their own wallets, according to one industry executive.

Amid the lingering fear, uncertainty and doubt, or FUD, it ended lawsuits against major cryptocurrency exchangesinvestors are increasingly releasing their bitcoins from crypto trading platforms.

Since mid-June, Bitcoin has been offered on the exchange dropped to its lowest level since February 2018, according to data from crypto news platform Santiment. The massive exchange rate outflows were driven by growth in proprietary custodial fueled by uncertainty around Binance and Coinbase, Santiment said.

The growing trend of self-custody is having a massive impact on cryptocurrency markets, Santiment head of marketing Brian Quinlivan told Cointelegraph on June 15.

One of the most notable results of self-custody is that it tends to reduce circulation, reducing the market capitalization tracked by sites like CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap.

“Circulation tends to dry up as coins are moved out of exchanges,” Quinlivan said, adding that the growing trend of self-custody has a flip side in the form of stagnant coins.

“This stagnation may have a negative impact on market capitalization due to reduced usability of the network as a whole,” the executive noted, adding:

“However, as long as there is still a healthy amount of exchange activity that has occurred, that should generally be enough to offset the negative impact of this current phenomenon.”

Quinlivan said coins leaving exchanges tend to have a long-term impact on markets. “Traders sometimes assume that if whales suddenly move a huge amount of tokens out of exchanges, the prices will go up immediately,” he said, adding that the firm has seen that it has typically been a much slower rise.

The CEO of Santiment noted that Bitcoin supply on the exchange has fallen from 16.1% on Black Thursday in March 2020 to 9.8% today. “Prices are still up 283 percent over that time period,” Quinlivan added.

While the self-custody trend continues to expand, it’s not quite possible to know how much BTC is sitting on cold wallets, according to Quinlivan. He said:

“Assuming we have all the exchange addresses, which no one does, then we would be able to measure exactly how much is being moved to cold wallets at any given moment, just by subtracting all these known exchange addresses.”

The executive went on to say that blockchain analysts can only provide their best estimate for now.

“This is why our exact figure of 9.8% BTC on exchanges may be slightly different compared to other figures. However, the longer time passes, the more accurate data we are able to capture,” Quinlivan noted.

Related: The CEO of Binance CZ reacts when the data points to billion outflows of the exchange

The news comes as Bitcoin’s market cap continues to decline, according to data from CoinGecko.

Since mid-April, the market value of Bitcoin has increased he dropped more than 15%, which at the time of writing was $494 billion. As previously reported by Cointelegraph, BTC’s market capitalization peaked at $1.28 trillion in November 2021, when The price of BTC reached an all-time high of $68,000.