BTC's new whales have increased their investment by 13 times this year and have invested $100 billion

According to CryptoQuant, the amount of investment by new BTC “whales” has increased 13 times this year, reaching nearly $108 billion on October 6.

Currently, investments by new whales account for 48.8% of the total realized cap of BTC , almost reaching the $113 billion paid by old whales.

It is worth noting that in absolute terms this is the highest amount these investors have ever spent.

“Realized cap” is a metric that calculates the value of each BTC’s unspent transaction output (UTXO) and takes into account the price when it last moved.

This is often used to measure how much value is stored in BTC .

Additionally, the relative participation of new “whales” in the total realized cap registered on October 6th hit a new all-time high.

The previous record was on May 16, 2021, when new whales held 18.2% of the network’s realized cap.

CryptoQuant’s dashboard shows that new “whales” are BTC addresses that have held more than 1,000 BTC for less than 155 days on average , excluding wallets owned by centralized exchanges and miners.

CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju calls this movement a “generational transfer” and predicts that the realized cap of new whales will soon surpass that of old whales.

In addition to the new “whale” accumulation and holding trend revealed by BTC on-chain data, active addresses in the network also broke an 11-month downtrend on Oct. 8.

Jamie Coutts, lead crypto asset analyst at Real Vision, highlighted this trend with X, noting that BTC’s organic network growth and adoption across all metrics help support its future as a global monetary network .

While this is a positive fundamental indicator, Coutts noted that the predictive power of active addresses has weakened over the past four years.

Meanwhile, a Glassnode report from Oct. 8 showed that the supply held by short-term BTC holders, waiting to take profits, was at a ratio of 1.2.

The report also added that short-term holder sentiment is key to understanding near-term price action as they represent new market demand .

On the other hand, open interest in futures contracts indicates that speculative activity is surging. In addition to the uncertainty of macro market signals, this also makes the market vulnerable to volatility, mainly deleveraging pressure and liquidation.