In the past 70 days, 100 whales spent nearly $600 million to "bottom-fish" Bitcoin

This article comes from Xiaocong Blockchain

Author | Long Yue, please indicate the source for reprinting

In recent months, when the price of Bitcoin has fallen sharply, Bitcoin whales have begun to "swim" and started to increase their holdings of Bitcoin in large quantities like bargain hunters.

Bitcoin.com counted yesterday that over the past two months, the wallets of the top five Bitcoin rich list have increased their holdings by 2,879 BTC (about 10.8 million US dollars), while the other 95 addresses in the top 100 have received more than 150,000 BTC (about 572 million US dollars).

Bitcoin.com also found that the top 100 richest Bitcoin whales tend to increase their holdings when the price of Bitcoin drops sharply, and it was no exception when Bitcoin plunged from $4,100 to below $3,800 on February 24.

Bitcoin whales seem to have started hoarding bitcoins in the bear market, bringing more purchasing power than selling power. Bitcoinexchangeguide reported that the top 100 bitcoin whale addresses transferred about 100,000 bitcoins worth $396 million in the past month. Among them, 10 addresses added a total of 74,000 bitcoins. The results show that the purchasing power brought by Bitcoin is currently greater than its selling power.

Moreover, these whales have been more active recently. The data director of crypto product rating company Flipside Crypto said yesterday that in the past three months, Bitcoin whales have been more active than recently, which has also brought a more active Bitcoin trading market. The company's January data also showed that many Bitcoin wallets that had been dormant for six months to two and a half years have become active again.

8.59% of addresses hold 99% of Bitcoin, but Bitcoin wealth concentration is slowly improving

The latest data from the Bitcoin Rich List shows that there are 107 addresses holding between 10,000 and 1 million Bitcoins, which account for less than 0.01% of the total number of Bitcoin wallet addresses and are rounded off to 0% in the table. However, the number of Bitcoins held by these 107 addresses accounts for approximately 19% of the total circulating supply of Bitcoins.

At the same time, there are 601 Bitcoin addresses holding assets worth more than US$10 million, while the vast majority of Bitcoin addresses in the market hold assets worth less than US$1,000.

(Source: bitinfocharts; Time: February 26, 2019)

Judging from the current data, the "rich-poor divide" in the Bitcoin world is still very obvious, with a small number of people amassing a large amount of wealth, but there is a view that the wealth concentration of Bitcoin is slowly improving.

Flipside Crypto's data director told LongHash that currently, 8.59% of Bitcoin wallets own 99% of the Bitcoin supply, surpassing the previous high of 8.56% in January 2016. This shows that the dispersion of Bitcoin wealth is increasing, but only slowly.

At the same time, Xiaocong discovered that the top five addresses on the Bitcoin rich list are all exchange addresses, which account for 3.27% of the total Bitcoin circulation. They are ranked as Bittrex (130,000 coins), Bitfinex (110,000), Bitstamp (100,000), Huobi (100,000), and Binance (100,000). Among them, there are four addresses marked with the words "cold wallet".

The cold wallets of exchanges are generally used to store user assets, which indicates that these addresses may not be personal addresses, and also dilutes the concentration of Bitcoin wealth to a certain extent.

The concentration of Bitcoin is a factor that the market is very afraid of, because Bitcoin whales have the ability to easily stir up the market and bring about a "tsunami". In previous reports, there is no shortage of news that attributed market fluctuations to Bitcoin whales.

However, a report by blockchain research company Chainalysis in October last year stated that Bitcoin whales are a diverse group. Two-thirds of Bitcoin whales are not active, and most of them are holding. Moreover, they may often be bottom-pickers in the market.

Recently, the actions of whales increasing their holdings of Bitcoin seem to be consistent with the image of bottom-pickers. However, if these whales want to "make trouble", the market may not be able to stop them.