Bitcoin whale jumping out of the water?

On January 12, Whale Alert successively monitored two billion-dollar bitcoin transfers. The amounts of the two transfers were 17,283 BTC (about 616 million US dollars) and 9060 BTC (about 327 million US dollars). The two transfers brought the flow of 26,000 bitcoins, and this is the epitome of large bitcoin transfers since January.

From Monday to Friday this week, Whale Alert alone monitored 65 large bitcoin transfers, 19 of which were transfers between anonymous wallet addresses. With these 19 transfers alone, the total number of bitcoins transferred reached 92,201, with a market value of about 3.5 billion US dollars.

The giant whale started to attract money?

The BTC.com blockchain browser shows that there are currently 100 Bitcoin addresses with a balance of more than 10,000 BTC, and these 100 addresses hold 13.6% of the Bitcoin circulation. If you add 1000-10000BTC addresses, 0.00695% of Bitcoin addresses in the world own 42.5% of Bitcoins.

Judging from the latest actions of these 100 addresses, the proportion of Bitcoin in the head address will continue to rise.

87 of the 100 addresses have transaction records in 2021, which shows that most of the large Bitcoin holders with over 10,000 BTC are relatively active.

Among these 100 addresses, only 6 addresses have the latest operation as transfer-out, and 94 addresses have the latest operation as transfer-in.

A careful analysis of the amount of bitcoins transferred from the head whale address will reveal that the trend of the head whale absorbing bitcoin has already appeared.

Take the second-ranked address in Bitcoin holdings as an example. This address currently holds 95,000 Bitcoins. This address has completed 48 transfers this year.

Among these 48 transfers, only 3 were transferred out, a total of 4,500 bitcoins were transferred out, and the transferred amount was about 16,875 bitcoins, a net increase of about 12375 BTC. If the net growth of Bitcoin is put into a new address, this new address will also enter TOP100.

From the historical transfer records of this address, you can also see the attributes of the "sucking address". The address received 129,000 bitcoins and only transferred 34,000 bitcoins.

Compared with the 16875 bitcoins transferred in 45 transfers, the fourth-ranked address transferred 16,000 bitcoins (11,000 at a time and 5,000 at a time) in just two times. (As shown below)

In addition, there are also cases of transferring a large amount of Bitcoin in a single day. For example, the address ranked fifth in Bitcoin holdings transferred 26450.18 BTC through 14 transfers on January 14 (including 13 transfers of 2000 BTC each).

It is worth noting that the wallet address for sending bitcoin is the Binance Hot Wallet address stolen in 2019. As of noon today, the address still has 21,000 bitcoins.

According to TechWeb news on January 13, the holdings of these 100 addresses have increased by 334,000 BTC in the past month, valued at 11 billion U.S. dollars. According to foreign media reports, the inflow of 100 addresses is more than ten times the outflow.

Large coin holders do not have only one whale address. Large coin holders form a new whale address through Bitcoin transfer. There are currently two most common methods.

The first is to keep your own whale address, which will continue to accumulate bitcoins, and then create one or more bitcoin addresses to introduce part of the bitcoins to the new address. The bitcoin balance of these new addresses exceeds in a short time 1000 BTC, to promote the rapid growth of the number of addresses above 1000 BTC.

The second method is to transfer almost all the bitcoins in the original address to the new address. Among the transfer cases above 1000 BTC monitored by Whale Alert, the balance of many outgoing addresses is close to 0, and the incoming address is the new address.

In addition to accumulating bitcoin through transfers, some bitcoin whales make a profit by buying bitcoin call options.

According to BeatleNews, when the Bitcoin price reached $20,000 last year, a Bitcoin whale bought more than 10,000 Bitcoin call options (expired at the end of January this year, with an exercise price of $36,000). On January 11, he flattened out most of the options, making a profit of about 45 million U.S. dollars, and again invested 13 million U.S. dollars to buy Bitcoin options ranging from 52,000 to 72,000 U.S. dollars.

Does Coinbase help institutional whales?

Of the 65 transfers monitored by Whale Alert, 49 were related to exchange wallet addresses. Coinbase accounted for 29 of them, accounting for more than half. Coinbase has also become the exchange with the most outflows in a single week.

During the week from December 28th to January 3rd, Coinbase outflowed a total of 47,000 bitcoins. In addition, from 0 to 12 o'clock on January 5th, Whale Alert alone monitored 16 large coinbase bitcoin transfers, with a cumulative outflow of 15,547 BTC.

You know, Bitstamp, which ranked second in net outflow in the previous week, only outflowed 11,000 bitcoins in 7 days.

A large amount of bitcoins flowed from Coinbase, and CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju judged that there may be over-the-counter transactions.

In his tweet at the end of last year, he pointed out that Coinbase's bitcoins often flow into custodial cold wallets. If Coinbase transfers a large amount of bitcoins to cold wallets, over-the-counter transactions may be possible.

In a subsequent tweet, he again mentioned Coinbase Bitcoin outflows and institutional investors over-the-counter transactions.

When will institutional investors and large currency holders deposit or withdraw Bitcoin? One piece of data is worth noting. On January 11, the price of Bitcoin fell from $39,000 to around $31,000. On that day, Whale Alert reported only 6 large transfers, and the next day it reported 29, of which 16 were related to Coinbase.

According to Ki Young Ju, although it is very difficult for the price of Bitcoin to fall below $30,000, institutional investors will choose to trade over the counter at a lower price to buy Bitcoin.

(Ki Young Ju: Many institutional investors buy bitcoin at the price of 30,000-32 thousand US dollars)

It is not as difficult for institutional investors to become a Bitcoin whale. If calculated based on a Bitcoin of 38,000 USD, you must have more than 10,000 Bitcoins if you want to enter the TOP100 address.

At present, Microstrategy has more than 70,000 bitcoins among listed companies, and Galaxy Digital holds more than 10,000 bitcoins, which can be regarded as a bitcoin whale.

Institutional giant whales, this is not in the 2017 bull market. I saw a sentence before. This bull market and the 2017 bull market look like bull markets, but the biggest difference is that 2017 was retail FOMO, this time it was institutional FOMO. The structure of the Bitcoin giant whale has changed, and institutions will influence the development of the Bitcoin market together with major currency holders.