Onchain Data Shows Rising Bitcoin Whale Index Surpassing 4-Year High

Market Analysis Jan 23, 2023 0 103 Add to Reading List

Onchain analytics from the research and analysis firm Glassnode shows that the number of bitcoin whales (addresses with at least 1,000 bitcoins) has surpassed 1,900 clusters. The number of network participants in terms of 1,000 coin whales hasn’t been this high since 2016.

Seven-day trailing statistics for the number of whales (addresses with balance ≥ $1k) has increased 2% according to statistics from Glassnode. This means the number of large BTC holders (1,940 clusters ≥ $1k) has increased a great deal since the recent Paypal crypto support announcement.

Addresses with Balance ≥ $1k touched a four-year high this weekend. The last time the Bitcoin Whale Index (≥ $1k) was this high was September 2016 just before the 2017 bull run started.

The increase in BTC whales suggests a number of investors believe the price will jump higher in the future. On October 22, 2020, the well known bitcoin analyst Willy Woo tweeted about data that shows there are more than 23 million active holders today.

“Datasource for 23.4m active [holders]: Cumulatively sum net entity growth, this takes into account [holders] coming in minus [holders] that have left completely (zero coins in their wallets),” Woo said.

Onchain data and blockchain analysis from bitinfocharts.com indicate that the number of bitcoin whales with 1,000 to 10,000 BTC on a single address has increased significantly. On February 25, 2019, there were 1,709 addresses with 1,000 to 10,000 BTC and that metric increased 24.28% to 2,125 addresses.

Interestingly, the number of addresses with 100 to 1,000 BTC dropped from 14,749 to today’s 13,869 addresses. Strangely enough, the addresses with 100,000 to 1,000,000 BTC dropped from five to one.

The stats from bitinfocharts’s “Top 100 Richest Bitcoin Addresses” also shows there are six exchanges with cold wallets represented in the top 20 addresses.

Huobi has the biggest balance with 203,502 BTC sitting in a single address. Huobi’s cold wallet address which holds the #1 position in the rich list, represents 1.10% of the bitcoins in circulation. This followed by exchange wallets from Coinbase, Binance, Bitfinex, Bittrex, and a smaller Binance cold wallet as well.

Data stemming from May 1, 2020, shows there were only 2,002 addresses with 100,000 to 1,000,000 BTC, which means 123 whales joined the fray since then.

While bitcoin’s (BTC) price has been appreciating this month a number of proponents have noticed the whale accumulation. Venture Coinist podcast host, Luke Martin noticed the trend during the first week of October.

“A rising Bitcoin Whale Index has been a leading indicator for $BTC price & bull markets. It is climbing to new highs right now,” Martin tweeted.