110 Bitcoin Whale Addresses Hold 10,000 BTC or More
Whales are very real entities in the cryptocurrency industry. Identifying a whale can often be done by looking at wallet addresses with significant amounts of coins. For Bitcoin, there are now 110 addresses with a balance of over 10,000 BTC.
It Takes 10,000 BTC to be a Proper Whale
It is interesting to see how people approach Bitcoin as an investment vehicle. Owning just 1 BTC is sufficient for most normal people. Whales, on the other hand, will often try to own a few dozen or even a few hundreds. In some cases, they will even purchase over 10,000 BTC. A remarkable sentiment, as this represents a net value of over $110 million.
Figuring out who these addresses belong to, is never easy. It is plausible to assume that a fair few of these addresses belong to exchanges, brokers, and other trading service providers. They often need to have ample BTC in stock to fulfill customer needs at all times. Achieving sufficient liquidity is crucial for such firms after all.
Additionally, there are some of the early Bitcoin adopters to keep in mind. Satoshi Nakamoto, for example, still controls a fair amount of BTC. Those coins have never been moved, but they are counted as a “whale address” in the statistics. The same applies to the people who either bought or mined Bitcoin before the currency gained any real value.
What is more interesting is why the number of whale addresses has increased by 4 in the past 24 hours. MicroStrategy has announced it is buying more BTC, which may be a factor. That said, a 3.8% growth for this metric is extremely unusual. This means over 1.1 million BTC is distributed among these 110 addresses. Increasing these numbers further will not be easy, but it’s not impossible either.
Less Liquidity is Good
As more and more BTC make their way to whale wallets, the liquidity on exchanges will often decrease. Less liquidity means less market manipulation and volatility. It is not a coincidence the number of whale addresses increases on the same day the Bitcoin price moves up again in spectacular fashion.
At the same time, there’s no point in overthinking these metrics either. More whales are accumulating, which is not exactly new in this industry. It is possible some exchanges are spreading funds to new wallets. There are many potential factors at play, yet we may never know the full tale behind this sudden increase. Perhaps that is for the best.
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