Number of BTC whales at an absolute minimum

BTC whales are divided into several categories. As for the largest, their number is the lowest in history. Their “only” remained 82.

Wu Blockchain, a Chinese journalist known for trying to provide objective information about China’s access to digital assets, pointed out an interesting fact about the development of the number of BTC whales on Twitter.

The biggest whales

Wu Blockchain said there are currently only 82 BTC whales that own more than 10,000 BTC. The last time they were so few was in December 2012. At that time, however, one BTC cost only $ 13.51, while currently its price is approximately $ 62,000. In other words, in 2012, you were a whale in this category if you had about $ 135,000 in BTC. Today, it must be at least $ 620 million.

According to Glassnode, the number of addresses with current holdings of ≥ 10,000 Bitcoins has dropped to the lowest level in history, with only 82 BTC addresses holding ≥ 10,000 Bitcoins. pic.twitter.com/78e6Lwi7Ys

– Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) October 17, 2021

The most famous whales

However, we most often include addresses with over 1,000 BTCs in the category of whales, which is at least $ 62 million at the current price. There were the most such addresses in February 2021 – 2488. Today there are 2145, which is roughly the same number as in March 2020, when the price of BTC fell sharply after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, but subsequently began to rise to historic highs.

Smaller whales

The last category of whales monitored are those that have at least 100 BTC – that is, they have at least $ 6.2 million in BTC to date. There are about 16 thousand such addresses and the most interesting thing about them is that their number has increased significantly in the last 5 weeks (see graph below).

Some analysts attribute this to the possibility that large new institutional investments in BTC are likely to take place in the background. On the other hand, it is necessary to point out that their number is about 200 pieces lower than it was in February this year. Most whales in this category fell during the May drop in prices after the ban on cryptocurrency mining in China.

However, according to Santiment, the number of addresses holding 100 to 1,000 BTC has increased significantly in the past five weeks.

– Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) October 17, 2021

And what about little players?

As far as retail is concerned, a positive long-term trend of growth in the number of addresses with at least 0.01 BTC (USD 620 and more) or at least 0.1 BTC (USD 6,200 and more) is a positive fact. This suggests that retail, ie ordinary people, is gradually cutting an ever-increasing chunk of the entire BTC pie, which contributes to a fairer distribution of BTC around the world.

Conclusion

The increasing number of BTC whales is mostly associated with the accumulation phase, as their decreasing number indicates that BTC is gradually distributed in the later phase of bull cycles. In the long run, however, it is good if BTC is gradually split among more and more players, so that whales do not have such significant control over the market. In other words, more smaller whales on the market (which is happening now), those with 100 or more BTCs, are probably better for BTC than more whales with 1,000 or 10,000 BTCs.