Bitcoin Whale Balance Hits Largest Monthly Decline: Glassnode

Bitcoin whales typically capture the stagnant market conditions to accumulate more coins. This trend continued even during the underwhelming price performance of Bitcoin in recent months, as new analysis suggests a dramatic uptick in whale activity during the period.

Glassnode’s latest edition of “The Week On-Chain,” observed that the aggregate Whale balance has declined by approximately 255k BTC since May 30. This was found upon isolating coins flowing between Whale entities and exchanges.

According to the on-chain intelligence platform, this trend represented the largest monthly balance decline in history, hitting -148k BTC/month.

Isolating for coins flowing between Whale entities and exchanges, the chart below shows that the aggregate Whale balance has declined by -255k BTC since 30 May.

This is the largest monthly balance decline in history, hitting -148k BTC/month. This indicates that there are… pic.twitter.com/Owm3GZkD4d

— glassnode (@glassnode) July 26, 2023

The report suggested that there are “noteworthy shifts” happening within the Bitcoin Whale cohort.
The Whale activity throughout 2023 has been primarily driven by short-term holders (STHs).
This cohort of investors holds assets for a maximum of 155 days and has emerged as more common. It has also become evident that these newer investors are trading in local market conditions.
As such, each rally and correction since the dramatic implosion of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX has witnessed a 10k+ BTC uptick in STH profit or loss, respectively.
More recently, whales have been exceedingly contributing to exchange activity, accounting for 41% of the total; a major chunk of the whale inflows – nearly 82% – was directed to Binance.

“Whale-to-exchange netflows have tended to oscillate between ±5k BTC/day over the last five years. However, throughout June and July this year, whale inflows have sustained an elevated inflow bias of between 4.0k to 6.5k BTC/day.”