Bitcoin witnesses historic whale exodus: what you need to know

Bitcoin whales are seeing a historic exodus. A new analysis by @CryptoVizArt, a senior researcher at Glassnode, highlights significant changes within the whale group.

The effect of bitcoin whales: the numbers unveiled

In a remarkable revelation, research The substantial influence of whales on recent market activity has been highlighted. According to the data, “34% of the selling pressure over the past 30 days was from Binance whales.” These influential entities have been instrumental in shaping recent market dynamics.

Furthermore, the research also highlights a trend in whale behavior: a significant decline in the total balance of whale entities on exchanges. Over the past 30 days, “whale flows to exchanges saw the largest monthly balance decline in history, reaching -148,000 BTC/month,” the report said. This dramatic decline marks a significant change within the whale group, raising interesting questions about their motives and strategies.

Inflow of whale funds into the exchanges increased significantly as the market witnessed a rally above $31,000. Data from Glassnode shows that the inflow volume of whales has reached an impressive +16,300 BTC/day, indicating their active participation in recent market movements. Notably, this whale dominance accounts for 41% of all exchange flows, comparable to both the LUNA crash (39%) and the FTX failure (33%).

During June and July, the inflow of whales maintained a high flow bias of between 4,000 and 6,500 BTC/day. Among all the exchanges, Binance emerged as the primary destination for whale inflows. The report shows that approximately 82% of whale-to-exchange flows were going to Binance. In contrast, Coinbase’s share was 6.8%, and all other exchanges’ share was 11.2%.

While the overall balance of whales has declined, @CryptoVizArt’s analysis points to interesting internal dynamics within the whale group. As some whales regained their balance, others experienced a decline. This incident prompted the researcher to introduce the concept of ‘whale reeffling’, which showed that not all whales follow the same strategy.

An investigation by Whale Group over the past 30 days shows that whales with more than 100,000 BTC have recorded an increase of +6,000 BTC, whales with 10k-100k BTC have seen their account balances decrease by -49.0k BTC and whales with 1k-10k BTC have recorded an increase of +33.8k BTC in their account balances. Overall, however, whale groups have only seen -8.7k BTC in net outflows.

Remarkably, whale entities now hold only 46% of the total supply, down from 63% in early 2021. Since the early days of bitcoin, a continuous downward trend can be observed.

short-term holders: driving force

The research also highlights the dominance of short-term holders (STH) among whaling entities. The data indicates that STH represent a significant portion of recent trading activity, actively trading in the market. This behavior is evident as market rallies and corrections lead to significant increases in gains or losses among this group.

Short-term holder (STH) dominance in exchange inflows increased to 82%. This is well above the long-term range (typically 55% to 65%) over the past five years. “From this, we can establish a case that the recent trading activity is driven by whales active in the 2023 market and thus classified as STH,” says the analyst. Profit booking has increased in each rally in 2023.

So BTC whale trading could be a good indicator for the time being. However, STH also requires special attention, which will eventually run out of bullets at some point.

At press time, the price of BTC was $29,203.