Bitcoin whales are on the move after the world’s largest cryptocurrency posted significant gains over the last few months. Massive demand from institutional investors has pushed the number of BTC whale addresses to a record high.
According to a report published by the on-chain market analysis and analytics platform, Glassnode, Bitcoin wallets holding 1,000 – 10,000 BTC have surged 14.18% between 12 March 2020 and 5 February 2021 due to a massive accumulation by large institutions.
Glassnode reported earlier that the number of Bitcoin addresses holding at least $1 million in BTC jumped above 94,000 for the first time in February 2021. As of writing, the world’s largest cryptocurrency is trading above $50,000 with a total market cap of nearly $950 billion.
“Wallets with 1k to 10k BTC holdings, in particular, have been in a strong uptrend since March 2020, now up by 14.18% between 12-Mar-20 and 5-Feb-21. This has been referred to as ‘Bitcoin whale spawning season’ as these addresses represent holdings of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars (considering price rallying from $3.8k to $58k in that time),” Glassnode mentioned in the report.
Bitcoin Supply
Bitcoin had a volatile start of the year, not only in terms of price but also the supply of the digital asset. Glassnode mentioned that Bitcoin whales saw a supply increase of approximately 80,000 BTC in January but large Bitcoin addresses dumped nearly 140,000 BTC worth more than $6 billion in February. Institutional buying is keeping the price of BTC above $50,000. In addition to MicroStrategy’s recent $1 billion BTC buy, crypto asset managers are accumulating Bitcoin at a rapid pace. Purpose Bitcoin ETF has accumulated more than 9,000 BTC in the last 4 days.
Grayscale, the world’s largest crypto asset manager, accumulated 66 BTC yesterday as its total Bitcoin accumulation crossed 655,500 BTC. Grayscale’s total cryptocurrency assets are now valued at more than $37 billion, a slight drop in value after the recent dip in BTC, ETH and LTC.