The crypto winter is slowly fading away, and at least one crypto whale has sprung into action. Blockchain.com, which offers wallet and exchange services, is reported to have transferred 74,105 Bitcoins worth over $1.5 billion. A crypto whale is an entity that holds over 10% of the total coins available. In terms of Bitcoins, anyone holding over 1,000 BTC will fall under this class.

In this case, the total transaction took place in various tranches and a series of small transactions, moving a billion dollars first, followed by another half a billion worth of bitcoins. The destination wallets are however unidentified, and thus the nature of these transactions can’t be ascertained.

The moving of crypto out of exchanges is considered a positive sign, as it shows that the owner aims to hold on to the assets for long durations and not trade them. The movement also reduces the total supply of the crypto, thus lending support to prices.

As far as bitcoin price and volatility is concerned, industry players say that this is the first time that Bitcoin is less volatile than Nasdaq or S&P for a 20-day period. However, a look inside the price charts since 2016 will show a highly volatile price action compared to equity markets.

Any further fall of Bitcoin price below its 2018 glory level of $18K will put the entire crypto world in deep crisis mode.  No wonder social media is overflowing with memes revealing the virtues and strengths of hodlers versus bears, weak hands, newbies, Peter Schiff, SEC actions, rising interest rates and so on.

The classification of bitcoin holders is quite popular with the deep oceanic world. Below the whales, there are sharks holding above 500 BTC, the cool dolphins play around with over 100 BTC, fishes there are aplenty with over 50 BTC, surrounded by a vast majority of shrimps with less than 1 BTC.

The whale movements are closely tracked with on-chain analysis. A report estimates that large movements occurred last week in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, and Ripple, with the total amount exceeding $400 million.

Well known bitcoin whales

Individuals: Sam Bankman-Fried (FTX), Brian Armstrong (Coinbase), the Winklevoss Twins (Facebook, Gemini exchange), and Justin Sun (Tron), Tim Draper, Barry Silbert, and Matthew Roszak.

Companies: MicroStrategy, Tesla, Square, Grayscale (custodian)

Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI)

Satoshi Nakamoto (dormant account)

And many more, such as large crypto exchanges.

The NFT market is also moving along similar lines with the presence of whales.

Off the exchange trade

Since blockchain transactions are public, it is possible to move crypto over the counter (OTC). These transactions therefore remain unknown.

Crypto whale tracking

There are several ways to track the action of recognized crypto whales. There are Whale Watchers, whale bot alerts, whale maps, and apps like the Clank App and Coincarp.

Simple public tracking tools like Etherscan and Solscan can be used to identify large holders and then track their movements. However, since blockchain addresses are anonymous, one can’t say with certainty as to what kind of transaction has happened, as it could be a to-the-self transaction.

Some analytics websites offer comprehensive dashboards to track cryptocurrency wallets, distribution and a host of metrics and plots.

One tool is Glassnode, an analytics dashboard to track major cryptocurrencies – https://studio.glassnode.com/metrics?a=BTC&m=addresses.ActiveCount

Sources:

https://www.yahoo.com/video/crypto-whale-moves-1-58b-191722815.html

https://www.moneycrashers.com/what-is-a-crypto-whale/