Bitcoin Whales

Bitcoin Whale Moved Over $337 Million After Transferring 7,073 BTC

February 28, 2021 by Chayanika Deka

Bitcoin Whales appeared to be been cashing out which snowballed into and unbearable selling pressure in the market.

February has been historically corrective for Bitcoin. Over the past week alone, the crypto-asset lost more than 20%. and was down to $45,381.

Accompanying yet another daily correction was an unknown wallet transfer with a significant amount by a Bitcoin whale who happens to be the 241st largest wallet of the cryptocurrency.

This was revealed by the blockchain tracker ‘Whale Alert’ which notified the transfer of more than 7,000 Bitcoin by an anonymous whale which was then worth approximately $337 million.

🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 7,073 #BTC (337,807,244 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

Tx: https://t.co/ZZnwD9clqP
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) February 27, 2021

The transaction in question was made at 01:53 UTC from an unknown wallet to another unknown wallet.

Besides, Bitcoin has had an exceptionally trying week and the sell-offs have coincided with several other whale movements. Due to the anonymity of the Bitcoin whale transfers, they were either speculated as institutions moving coins to cold storage, or huge over-the-counter [OTC] trades or internal transfers between exchange wallets.

What sparked even more curiosity was some really ancient Bitcoin whale movements whose coins were lying dormant for more than a decade.

Willy Woo’s Take On Bitcoin Whale Movement

Whale movements can sometimes jolt the markets. For instance, a Bitcoin whale movement back this past December sung the crypto-asset’s price just as it crossed $20,000. According to an expert, however, the series of panic sell-offs that shook the market this February was was due to falsely generated concerns regarding a whale dumping.

In a recent interview on What Bitcoin Did, the popular on-chain analyst and market researcher, Willy Woo claimed that incorrectly spawned market concerns over a whale dumping $1.5 billion in Bitcoin is what likely generated the panic sell that eventually resulted in the cryptocurrency’s price drop to a low of $45,230 on the 26th of February.

Woo, along with Glassnode CTO Rafael Schultze-Kraft went on to confirm the transaction in question was merely an internal transfer of the exchange’s funds.

He said,

“I was trying to figure out this big sell-off. And, you know, the very peak of it started when there was a little alert that we had $1.5 billion that just moved onto the exchanges to sell… the assumption was to sell. And I think that spread amongst traders and we started to see the sell-off preempting that.”

Larger Bitcoin Wallets Are Shuffling Supply

February 23, 2021 by Chayanika Deka

One of the most promising trends that Bitcoin has witnessed was its corporate balance sheet acquisition, with MicroStrategy at the tip of the spear. But the latest market movement proved to be the biggest and the most damaging correction that Bitcoin sustained in its lifetime.

The crypto-asset lost $200 Billion in just 24-hours following panic among the retail traders.

Bitcoin Accumulation Wallets Hit Reversal

Leading up to this event was the peculiar activity from the large wallet holders who were found to have been shuffling supply. As noted by the blockchain intelligence firm, Glassnode, wallets with 1k to 10k Bitcoin holdings appeared to be ‘reducing holdings’.

This is in a clear reversal in the accumulation trend by these high-profile wallets which had been in accumulation throughout 2020. But this class of BTC holders saw a perfect inverse in 2021.

According to the weekly report by Glassnode, Whales saw a supply increase in January of around +80k BTC and a subsequent decrease in the supply of -140k BTC in February.

It is important to note how the supply changes for the 100 to 1k BTC class [purple] and1k to 10k BTC,[(green] is mirrored in volume and shape.

Upon closer inspection, it was found that when one class saw an increasing volume, the other saw a decreasing volume and vice-versa. Hence, large vertical changes in charts like this often represent that a few large entities [example: exchanges, whales, or miners] making internal transactions.

The latest wallet behaviour could, in fact, signify that a sizeable portion of these coins may not be sold, but instead being restructured in custodial wallets. Along the same line, Glassnode noted,

“There was a preference for 1k to 10k wallets in January that are now transitioning into larger sets of UTXOs with smaller denominations between 100 and 1k. Perhaps coins are being placed into multi-signature schemes or custodians are undertaking internal shuffling to meet client requirements.”

Furthermore, the balance held by accumulation addresses continued to remain in a steadily upward direction which suggested long-term ‘HODLer heuristics’. The fact that these wallets saw no spends further validated the above argument.

That being said, while it is no secret that these Bitcoins are on the move and larger balances are being reclassified, it, however, does not necessarily demonstrate an end to, as Glassnode said, “whale spawning season”.

Another Bitcoin Whale With 100k+ Tokens Emerge

January 28, 2021 by Chayanika Deka

Despite Bitcoin’s rather weak price movement, another whale address has emerged that has 100K+ Bitcoin tokens held in it. This was reported by the crypto-analytic Santiment which tweeted,

“For the first time since June 24th, Bitcoin has a 2nd whale address with 100k+ $BTC tokens held. There are also now 233 new addresses with 1,000+ $BTC in them, a clear All-Time High”

Bitcoin made a swift recovery after falling below $30k on Wednesday. By the looks of it, whales have tried to buy the level to avert a further breakdown after reclaiming it.

Bitcoin’s Growing Accumulation: a mega bullish trend

So far, the world’s premier crypto-asset has managed to retain its fort above the aforementioned support level. Thanks to rapid upswings, data shows that the coin’s retail and institutional investors have escalated the accumulation.

Another crypto analytics and research platform, Bloqport revealed data compiled by Glassnode wherein it mentioned that 140 new Bitcoin addresses with 1,000+ BTC were created during the last 28 days alone. It was found that the number of Bitcoin whale addresses has risen significantly since the start of 2020.

Besides, a total of 2,450 Bitcoin addresses were now holding a minimum of 1,000 BTC, a new all-time high.

Its tweet further stated that the recent trends of increase in whale addresses suggested that large entities may be expecting a significant price rise for BTC in the near future.

Besides, the number of whale addresses holding 10,000+ ETH also climbed to the highest level in 13 months as 35 new Ethereum whale addresses were found to have been created since the beginning of the year.

Further indicating confidence in the ongoing bull market was the movement of these whales especially during dips. The abrupt sell-off this week was driven by massive selling in the spot market.

This was further accompanied by astonishing trading volumes. The market-wide rout has so far failed to deter the optimism of big players from accumulating the crypto-asset. Moreover, these large bag holders expect the pullbacks to be short-lived.

Here’s How USDC Whales At Coinbase Are Playing the Bitcoin Game

December 21, 2020 by Reena Shaw

Bitcoin frenzy has gripped the world as it went on a fierce rally above $24K. Despite a minor retracement, the world’s premier crypto-asset was being traded at $22,873, at the time of writing. With the new peak, it can be safely said that Bitcoin the new cycle has been gaining a lot of steam.

USDC Whale Deposits in Coinbase

In yet another interesting observation, USDC whales have reportedly been making massive deposits at Coinbase. This was noted by prominent crypto analyst and CEO of CryptoQuant, Ki Young Ju who also revealed that this trend, is most often followed by Bitcoin’s price rallying higher against the US Dollar.

Rationale

It is important to note that Coinbase is a huge hit among institutional investors, both old and new, especially in the US. Furthermore, the SF-based cryptocurrency exchange has registered a large number of OTC deals since mid-2020. It is no secret that institutional investors or high-net individuals are usually the ones who execute a significant portion of the OTC deals in question.

And according to the analyst, most of these investors have been using the dollar-pegged Coinbase and Circle-backed stablecoin. Both these platforms have a solid reputation which can be attributed to the rise in popularity of the stablecoin as Bitcoin surged to record levels.

Ki Young Ju had previously explained how several on-chain metrics help in estimating several OTC deals. The exec had pointed towards the massive BTC outflows from Coinbase which was around 6000-8000 BTC from exchange to the cold wallets of the users.

“If Coinbase moves a significant amount of Bitcoins to other cold wallets, it would indicate OTC deals. “

In the second week of December, British investment giant Ruffer LLC reportedly bought $700 worth of Bitcoin via Coinbase, in November this year. Adding to this trend was none other than the leading asset manager, Grayscale’s most popular product- the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust [GBTC], which has been on an accumulating spree, also amassed a massive quantity of the crypto-asset through Genesis Trading which in turn uses the Coinbase OTC desk.

To top that, the ‘Fund Flow Ratio’ also noted a spike in its figures in tandem with Bitcoin’s latest price action. Fund Flow Ratio for all exchanges is essentially the ratio of network transaction volume of exchanges among the entire tokens transferred on the network. And when this value goes up, it basically implies that most of the network transactions are exchange deposits or withdrawals.

Contrastingly, the transaction volumes are originating from non-exchange wallets. As noted by the analyst, since the price is eventually determined on exchanges, massive non-exchange transaction volume is often considered as a bullish signal, and that these transactions include OTC deals.

The exec’s final tweet read:

“Conclusion:
This $BTC bull-run never stops as long as these OTC indicators keep saying institutional-buying.”

Optimism Rises as Bitcoin Whales Refuses to Sell; Institutions Flocking in to Buy More BTC

October 11, 2020 by Reena Shaw

Bitcoin broke past the crucial $11k on the 9th of October. The whale activities of Bitcoin suggested strengthening momentum in terms of the coin’s price. The price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency tested $11,500 for the first time in over a month and one of the main drivers for this could be whale accumulation. According to the blockchain intelligence platform, Glassnode, which noted that the number of Bitcoin whales has been on a consistent uptrend for the past months.

Huge Bullish Signal

Typically whales and institutions have a major impact on the price of Bitcoin because of the sizes of their trades. The rise of Bitcoin’s value this week has not yet triggered a sell-off. This essentially depicted a sentiment of declining appetite of whales to sell BTC, which is a positive factor. Hence, there is a strong buying demand from Bitcoin whales

Along the same line, Glassnode’s tweet read,

“An indication that more high-net-worth individuals are entering the space to invest in Bitcoin in expectation of BTC price appreciation.”

Rising Institutional demand

The optimistic activity of BTC whales occasioned with a clear spike in institutional demand for Bitcoin on Bakkt. According to the latest Skew charts, the open interest [OI] in monthly Bitcoin futures on the Intercontinental Exchange’s [ICE] Bakkt platform was surging to levels not seen since mid-August. The figures for OI rose to $15 million on the 9th of October.

Open positions on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s [CME] Bitcoin futures also bounced back depicting a bullish outlook in the underlying asset’s price action in the coming days. This uptick in two major institutional platforms along with the price surge essentially indicated the strength behind the latest push. Meanwhile, trading volume on both Bakkt and CME has been on a declining trend for the past couple of weeks.

Over the last two months, two multibillion-dollar behemoths made public bulk purchases of Bitcoin. Back in August, it was the publicly-traded business intelligence company, MicroStrategy announced the purchase of 21,454 Bitcoins at an aggregate purchase price of $250 million. This was followed by yet another additional $175 million worth of Bitcoins.