By George Ward
According to Glassnode data, retail investors are still bullish on BTC as they continue to grow their holdings. On the other hand, whales have slipped in their Bitcoin accumulation.
A retail investor is different from a whale. Generally, a retail investor holds 1 BTC or less, while a whale has over 1000 BTC. Per reports, the BTC holdings of retailers have doubled. As of 2018, they held 1.5 million BTC, while institutional investors had 10 million.
However, the setbacks and crises in the crypto sector, including the FTX collapse, bankruptcy cases, Terra collapse, and hacks, have caused a change in their holdings. During the crypto downturn ignited by Terra’s collapse, data shows that investors still bought BTC.
Unfortunately, BTC traded flat in Q3 2022 due to the bearish nature of the market. The data further revealed that the accumulation phase began in late October for Bitcoiners with at least one BTC.
Conversely, those with over 10,000 BTC have not stopped selling since the middle of July till now. Based on previous data, this is the third-largest dump spearheaded by BTC whales in accumulation and transactions.
According to CryptoQuant, an on-chain analytical platform, Bitcoin whales’ response to the Terra and FTX saga is to have sold more than 365K BTC in the last six months.
Whales Responsible For 80% Of BTC Sell-Offs Since June
Furthermore, on-chain data shows that Bitcoin whales with 1,000 to 10,000 BTC sold huge amounts of their holdings from June to November. The data further states that whales are to blame for over 80% of BTC sell-offs since June.
Presently, the price of BTC is oscillating around the $16,000 and $17,000 region. Meanwhile, retail investors are not deterred by the low price. Retail investors have added about 96,200 BTC to their holdings following the FTX collapse.
In addition, data from Glassnode shows that the number of BTC wallet addresses has increased recently, hitting a new high. Since the FTX collapse, several crypto investors have moved their BTC off exchanges into hard wallets.
The FTX crisis contributed to an increase in the number of Bitcoin outflows from exchanges. Users’ trust in centralized exchanges diminished as they turned to self-custody.
According to Glassnode, BTC exchange outflows hit 106,000 BTC per month, a first in history. This high exchange outflow means the BTCs in these hard wallets might stay dormant for a long time.