Data: The number of Bitcoin whales has soared, and the number of addresses with more than 1,000 Bitcoins has reached a two-year high

According to Arcane Research’s Glassnode data, the number of wallets with at least 1,000 bitcoins has soared to 7.2% since December. In contrast, it took 11 months for the number of cryptocurrency whales to increase to 6.7% throughout 2020.

According to BitInfoCharts data, there are currently 2,318 crypto wallets with more than 1,000 Bitcoins. As of press time, these assets are worth $35.7 million. Some of these wallets are from wallets owned by cryptocurrency trading platforms (Huobi, Binance, and Bittrex), which are considered the largest whales. Only Huobi has more than 100,000 BTC.

However, most of the top 100 addresses are dormant, meaning the Bitcoin in them has not been moved in years.

The knee-jerk assumption when explaining the rapid growth of whales is that there is an increase in institutional buying. However, Arcane Research does not rule out that there may be a more general reason behind this: trading platforms splitting their wallets.