most long-time holders are believers of this market. so when this opportunity presents, they will always buy what they can afford. and then, they will just wait for the right time to sell off. but for some new holders, usually they will panic as they are not yet familiar with how the market behaves.
this 20k+ range of btc is like a price heaven for them, as they can easily accumulate btc at a lower price, that is, if you truly believe that one day btc market will start rising again. and for me, the possibility is very high considering the stakeholders involved right now and it keeps on growing.
And when the market is not in their favours and they panic as you said since they're not quite familiar with how the market behaves yet, then bitcoin price once again will go down and those holders will keep buying it once they see some opportunity like that one. They will keep buying at the lower price and waiting for the right moment to sell of or they just keep hodling 'em till it reaches the possible highest price. Even for big traders, 20k price range is actually kinda cheap for them, a long as they can afford to. At this point, it's no surprise to think that we've seen a lot of hodlers nowadays, it's like when market is in bearish situation it's actually the best time for them to join the party to buy cheaper coins that suffered from it and all.