- Crypto Whales are those entities that can manipulate prices through actions triggering a domino effect within the market.
- These manipulations are done by large buying and selling orders to influence the sentiments of traders and investors.
Crypto whales’ movement prediction is a crucial component to keep in mind for analysts, traders, and investors. By understanding blockchain analytics, it’s possible to predict and analyze the whale’s behavior in real-time. Especially, the entities holding 1K to 5K Bitcoin (BTC) can possibly enable insights into crypto market dynamics through their activities like accumulation and distribution.
However, as the crypto market evolves and witnesses increased organizational participation, the impact of crypto whales has decreased. While their activities were once considered market movers, these entities exist as an element of a broader landscape that has very little impact on the market’s single player. Let’s take a deep dive into the activities of the crypto whale and try to analyze the current market trends of this ever-evolving ecosystem.
Whales’ Impact on Market Trends
Crypto whales have long been crucial in reshaping the market conditions and directions. Let’s have a look at the comparison between market trends in the years 2017 and 2018 including the 2020-2021 noticeable shift. During the bullish run of 2017, the net decrease in BTC held by whales was confirmed by the “Number of balanced entities greater than and equal to 1000” metric. This downtrend was a result of new market entrants, sudden price volatility, and the growing market landscape that showed ample opportunities for whale
During the 2017 bull run, there was a net decrease in Bitcoin held by whales, as confirmed by the Number of Entities With Balance ≥ 1k metric below. This downward trend was possibly fueled by new market entrants, intense price fluctuations, and the then-maturing market landscape that presented ample opportunities for whale allocation. Employing this metric that counts unique entities having at least 1K BTC, can have enough insights into the market’s dynamic trends. These entities are considered collections of addresses overseen by a single network participant. Glassnode’s cutting-edge cluster mechanism determines this system.
Historical Peaks
Analyzing the 2020-2021 period, the Bitcoin and Crypto market space underwent a shift marked by the inception of organizational investors. This transformation decreased the market impact of crypto whales and showed a matured Crypto landscape characterized by high liquidity, a stable price level, and also volatile market participation.
In the ever-evolving crypto market, we have seen that the net balance held by Whales has been diminishing over Bitcoin’s historical reach and is constant with the Relative Address Supply Distribution metric. The metric provides a deeper analysis of the circulating supply of BTC held by entities’s addresses across specific balance spans.
Historical peaks provide a complete view of this downtrend:
- At the peak of the year 2011, Whales held about 76% of the total circulating supply of BTC.
- By the peak of the year 2013, this graph fell to approximately 62%.
- In 2017, the percentage had a further downfall to 52%.
- However, during the 2021 peak, whale entities held around 53% of the circulating supply showing a slight uptrend.
- By September 2023, performance dropped to 39% of the total supply.
Conclusion
Bitcoin’s inception led to the transformation of the whole crypto landscape. BTC stand-alone affects all other cryptocurrencies, while a small fluctuation in BTC has an impact on other cryptos as well. It can be shown by its market dominance which is over 51% (at the time of writing). Whale entities with their large crypto holdings try to manipulate the price with certain actions to alter the trader’s and investors’ sentiment.
