Data: Bitcoin balances on centralized exchanges are depleting, with $10 billion in Bitcoin outflows in the past four months

Bitcoin prices have resumed their upward momentum over the past two days, hitting a March 2021 high of $54,822 on Tuesday morning. Back in December 2020, it was noted that the Bitcoin inventory on centralized exchanges had fallen to a three-year low, and Bitcoin's exchange balances have continued to plummet this year. Since October 2020, as much as 189,000 Bitcoins have been withdrawn from the top five leading cryptocurrency exchanges.

Bitcoin exchange balances plummet on many popular crypto trading platforms

The price of Bitcoin (BTC) has been performing well this week, with the leading crypto asset currently trading at $53,820 at the time of writing. Last week, the price was much lower, reaching a low of $43,171 on Bitstamp on February 28. Meanwhile, on-chain data shows that Bitcoin trading balances held on popular trading platforms are still draining out.

William Clemente III, a sophomore finance major, tweeted another about Bitcoin balances on exchanges on March 7. Clemente shared a chart from Glassnode, an on-chain crypto analytics portal.

Statistics from on-chain analytics data provider Glassnode show that popular trading exchanges like Coinbase, Binance, Huobi and many other platforms have lost 20% of their Bitcoin balances in the past 12 months. As usual, Bitcoin analysts believe that this data shows that investors are accumulating, rather than selling Bitcoin on exchanges. For example, news.Bitcoin.com noted that exchange Bitcoin balances fell in December 2020 and also decreased in October 2020. On October 16, 2020, it was reported that customers had withdrawn 187,000 Bitcoins from exchanges since June 2020.

The top five cryptocurrency exchanges by Bitcoin balance saw 189,000 Bitcoins withdrawn by customers in the past four months

144 days ago in mid-October 2020, Coinbase was the number one Bitcoin exchange by Bitcoin holdings, and it remains the leader. However, at the time, Coinbase held 908,000 Bitcoins, while today's statistics show that Coinbase holds only 870,000 Bitcoins. This means that in the past 21 weeks, 34,000 Bitcoins have been withdrawn from the San Francisco-based exchange. And since June 2020, 36,000 Bitcoin withdrawals have been seen leaving Coinbase.

At the time, Huobi Global was the second-largest Bitcoin holder in terms of cryptocurrency exchange balances. However, today Huobi has been pushed down to third place, replaced by Binance. Huobi had a BTC balance of 345,000, but about 93,000 Bitcoins have since left the exchange. In the screenshot below, the top five cryptocurrency trading platforms are shown, ranked by transparent Bitcoin balances. This exchange balance ranking data comes from Bituniverse exchange market statistics.

According to statistics from Bituniverse, Peckshield, Chain.info, and Etherscan, Binance is now the second-largest holder in terms of Bitcoin balances among cryptocurrency exchanges. The exchange currently holds 215,000 Bitcoins, but four months ago, Binance held 266,000 Bitcoins as it lost 51,000 BTC in customer withdrawals.

At that time, San Francisco exchange Kraken was the seventh largest Bitcoin exchange balance holder, and today, Kraken ranks fourth. Today, Kraken has 137,000+ Bitcoin reserves, but four months ago, the total was 132,000 Bitcoin. This means that since October last year, Kraken has gained some lead in the Bitcoin exchange balance race.

The fifth top BTC holding exchange is OKEx, which was also ranked fifth in October 2020. At that time, OKEx's Bitcoin reserves were still 198,000 BTC, while now it is 187,000 BTC. This means that 11,000 BTC have been withdrawn from OKEx since October 16, 2020. Since our last research on large exchange withdrawals that occurred last year, Bitmex has withdrawn 3,000 BTC.

A combination of BTC exchange balance data indicates that the top five leading exchanges have lost 189,000 BTC or over $10 billion using today’s Bitcoin (BTC) exchange rate since mid-October. These statistics can be viewed by looking at individual exchanges using Glassnode’s BTC exchange balance data and Bituniverse’s exchange balance rankings.

The billions of dollars of Bitcoin leaving centralized cryptocurrency exchanges show that people want a non-custodial way to safely hold their Bitcoin, which to many observers also means that they don’t want to sell those coins anytime soon.

Original article: https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-balances-on-exchanges-are-draining-leading-platforms-see-10-billion-in-btc-withdrawn-in-4-months/

By Jamie Redman

Compiled by: Xiyu

Source: Babbitt Information