Assets of “whales” decreased by 140,000 BTC in February

The assets of bitcoin wallets containing from 1,000 to 10,000 BTC increased by 14.18% from March 12, 2020 to February 5, 2021, Glassnode draws attention in a new report. However, over the past two weeks, such wallets have been reducing their share of assets. In January, the increase was 80,000 BTC, while the decline in February was 140,000 BTC. As Glassnode notes, understanding the behavior of owners of large wallets with 100 BTC and more helps to understand the market dynamics they cause.

Wallets containing 10 to 100 BTC are marked in red below, 100 to 1,000 BTC in purple, and 1,000 to 10,000 BTC in green. Only the latest are categorized as “whales” by Glassnode. As you can see on the graph, the assets of the intermediate category were moving up this month, and the other two – down.

“Is this a sign of new selling pressure? Are the institutionalists scared or have they started taking profits? ” – are asked by Glassnode analysts, immediately noting that this is not necessarily the case.

In their opinion, a significant proportion of the transferred coins may not be sold, but distributed among other custodian wallets. In January, there was a preference for wallets between 1,000 and 10,000 BTC, into which coins could be moved after purchase. Now the trend has shifted towards a larger number of addresses with a smaller remainder.

“Perhaps the coins are housed in multi-signature schemes, or the custodians move internally to meet the needs of their customers,” suggests Glassnode.

In support of this version, they add that the balances of wallets used to accumulate cryptocurrency with at least two incoming transactions and no outgoing ones continue to grow. This, in turn, suggests that the movement of large sums by “whales” does not mean the end of the accumulation of bitcoins, but, perhaps, on the contrary, about moving them for even deeper cold storage.

Increasing the balances of wallets used to accumulate bitcoins