Holding is what someone say Long therm investment. In my point of view is something more else than long therm investment. In best option is never sell Bitcoins.
Holders on the way grow with cryptoworld. Holding of Bitcoins is a privilege. On the world is only ~21 000 000 Bitcoins and not everyone can have one Bitcoin. Even with 8 zeros after comma plus 3 zeros on LN network it is hart to have bitcoins or part of it in main network.
Second view is. Bitcoin is like individual independent investment for long term accumulation of money.
My theory is that in the time numbers of small holder still growing because Holding is best for at least two halving or more. In this theory holder have exit strategy. They know when they can start to use bitcoins from his treasure. The number is combination of how many bitcoins you have and what price is. Best practice is put part of your wage in bitcoin regularly. And I think that numbers of this individuals growing. And part being holders is simple. When bitcoin go up you are happy because price is higher and when bitcoin is down you are happy because you can buy more with same many and you will do it anyway.
Because bitcoin is anonymous we can not know how many people are real holders for this theory.
But in the world we can see how El Salvador buying hundreds of Bitcoins. Then we must realize that not only individuals but also states and other institution is buying Bitcoins for holding or for shorter investment. Shorter investment is more liquid than holding. Holding is mostly on cold wallets.
You can see on glasnode's reports that numbers of liquid bitcoins on the market still going down notwithstanding the price. And numbers of address with bitcoins that do not move is growing.
And I think in this market situation that in some point price on the market will not be driven by bulls or beers but market it self will be driven by holders.
Easily saying number of bitcoins for sell is smaller and smaller and numbers of buyers are bigger and bigger.