Number of Big Bitcoin Whales Are at an All-Time Low

Bitcoin has moved past the $62,000 (roughly Rs. 46,64,880) mark for the first time in five months, a milestone that the entire crypto market is positive about. With more growth expected in the coming weeks, investors continue to flock to the digital asset even though it has reached “overbought” levels this month. Well, October’s massive rally is being attributed to whales buying big, but new data suggests that the number of big Bitcoin (BTC) whales — which are investors holding as much as BTC 10,000, have fallen to an all-time low.

As per a tweet by Chinese journalist Colin Wu, on-chain market analysis group Glassnode claims that the number of Bitcoin whales with more than BTC 10,000 has fallen to 82 — a figure that hasn’t dipped to such lows since mid-December 2012. Back then, Bitcoin was valued at $13.5 (roughly Rs. 1,015), which meant that BTC 10,000 was only worth $135,000 (roughly Rs. 1.02 crores). Today, BTC 10,000 is worth over $621 million (roughly Rs. 4,655.04 crores).

Glassnode didn’t reveal who these 82 whales are, but they are very likely Bitcoin companies, cryptocurrency exchanges and very early investors.

But Glassnode’s findings aren’t very conclusive on whether the number of whales has actually dropped. According to a tweet by Santiment published recently, the number of accounts holding BTC 100–1,000 has “significantly” increased over the past five weeks. Santiment says the number of Bitcoin wallet addresses within this group has increased by 254, a 1.9 percent increase in a short span of time.

This suggests that some whales have spread their Bitcoin holding over multiple addresses and that some addresses are managed by multiple users. Nevertheless, this is a good sign for the crypto market as the smaller the percentage that a small group owns of the total supply, the more decentralised the crypto asset becomes.

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