Bitcoin analysts anticipated a price acceleration of the leading coin after its May halving event. Bitcoin had just hit unseen lows around $4,000 in March, and many expected the price to rise from the lows. However, the coin was unable to stage a sound bid and trends below the $10,000 mark. Nearly over a massive amount of time this year, the coin has been trading sideways. Large investors or whales continued to accumulate coins, and the halving event saw Bitcoin whales increase by 2%. But as per the recent report, the number of whale addresses or wallet addresses holding at least 10,000 bitcoins has decreased to a 14-month low.
Post Halving Event and Whales
The mining difficulty happened to be another metric fundamentally affected by the halving event. On July 13, the mining difficulty of Bitcoin hit a new record high of 17.3 trillion. This adjustment is an addition to the bitcoin hash rate and mining difficulty of last week at 9.89 percent. While this is a two-sided coin for miners and could serve as either a privilege or a burden, investors are finding these fundamentals healthy for securing the network. Despite remaining flat over the last four months, the coin has continued to post minor price spikes.
A recent fundamental metric analysis on Glassnode is recording a decline in the number of bitcoin whales.
Whales are individuals or firms that own large amounts of assets, and for Bitcoin, a whale metric indicates any wallet address that owns at least 10,000 Bitcoins. Currently, there are not many addresses that contain this amount of bitcoins. Between July 2019 and July of this year, the number of whales dropped significantly from 120 to 103. Despite the difference of 17 seemingly appearing as a meagre figure, down 17 whales means that the whales sold or moved at least 170,000 bitcoins.
Bitcoin Whales Decline: Bullish or Bearish?
The only limitation for the Whale Metric is that it does not indicate whether a whale address has been assigned to another / other address. It is therefore difficult to determine whether a whale sold its bitcoins or just split its address into two.
A whale selling their bitcoins may prove to be a bearish indicator. Why? Because, to some extent, it translates into holders who are not willing to hold large portions of coins. However, a closer look indicates that the decline in whales could be a bullish indicator. Even then, the fact that a whale sold their coins and led to the creation of more addresses is definitely a bullish move.