According to a new Glassnode report, the number of large Bitcoin holders has been growing for the first time since 2016, but the amount of BTC they hold is decreasing.
According to Glassnode, for the first time since 2016, the number of “whales” – large cryptocurrency holders owning at least 1,000 BTC, has begun to grow. However, the average deposit amount of these large investors is reduced.
“Despite an increase in the number of whales this year, the amount of BTC they hold is still significantly lower than the peak volume,” wrote report author Liesl Eichholz.
The richest cryptocurrency “whales” were during the “bull” cryptocurrency market at the end of 2017, when the BTC price almost reached $ 20,000. The state of today’s large bitcoin holders is not as great as before: the average number of BTC per “whale” decreased during 2020 of the year.
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“While the condition of the“ whales ”as a group begins to grow again, each of them on average has become a bit poorer,” writes Aichholz. “The average balance of BTC held by the whales has been declining since 2011 and has not substantially increased in 2020 along with the number of whales.”
According to the analyst, the increase in the number of “whales” is partly due to the fact that they accumulate more BTC than before, and new “whales” appear that have withdrawn cryptocurrency from exchanges. The large withdrawal of BTC by large investors from exchanges is associated with Black Thursday in mid-March, when bitcoin lost more than 20% of its value in less than a day.
Perhaps then the “whales” wanted to “buy at the bottom, and then withdraw their BTC to hold on to the HODL strategy in anticipation of the next bullish rally,” the report said. Eichholz notes that the growth of BTC held by large holders cannot be called “very significant”, but it can become so if the trend continues.
The number of BTC held by the “whales” has been declining over the past five years, falling by more than 22% from $ 6.7 million to $ 5.2 million, but this year more large investors entered the market, and therefore the indicator began to grow. And the dominant position of “whales” in the market also shows the largest steady growth since 2011.
The last time a significant increase in the number of “whales” was recorded in April before the Bitcoin halving. At that time, Glassnode analysts reported that in anticipation of halving the award to the miners, large players began to build up BTC reserves on their wallets.
