On-chain data shows the Bitcoin whales have continued to be active recently, with the last week being their 2023 week with the highest average activity.
Bitcoin Whales Are Displaying Highest Activity In 16 Weeks
As per data from the on-chain analytics firm Santiment, Wrapped BTC (WBTC) has also seen high whale activity in the past week. The relevant indicator here is the “whale transaction count,” which measures the total amount of transactions being made on the Bitcoin blockchain that is at least $100,000 in value.
The $100,000 cutoff is chosen because generally, only the whales (both the small and large ones) are capable of moving such a large amount of the cryptocurrency in a single transaction.
When the value of the whale transaction count is low, it means there aren’t many large transfers happening on the blockchain currently. Such a trend suggests the whales aren’t that active on the network right now.
On the other hand, high values of the indicator imply whales have an active interest in trading the asset at the moment. As the transfers made by these whales are so large, enough of them taking place at once can sometimes have the power to move the market. Because of this reason, when the metric is showing this trend, the asset’s price can experience some elevated volatility.
Now, here is a chart that shows the whale transaction count, as well as its 30-day moving average (MA), for both Bitcoin and WBTC over the last few months:
Looks like the value of the metric for both the coins has been pretty high in recent days | Source: CryptoQuant
As displayed in the above graph, the Bitcoin whale transaction count has been at relatively high levels recently as the cryptocurrency’s price has observed a sharp uptrend. The daily values, however, have actually gone down compared to the spikes seen a week or so back.
But the 30-day MA of the metric has only been going up despite this, as those large spikes seen before were more isolated, while the indicator has seen more consistently high values in the last few days.
The 30-day MA Bitcoin whale transaction count has now hit the highest level in 16 weeks as these humongous holders are now making more than 10,000 transactions per day. This suggests that Bitcoin whales have been quite active on the blockchain recently.
The WBTC whales, too, are observing a period of elevated activity, as their 30-day transaction count has reached a 15-week high now. WBTC is an ERC-20 token that’s backed 1:1 by BTC, meaning that its value is the same as the latter.
As the whale transaction count indicator doesn’t separate buy volume from sell volume, it’s hard to say what effect the elevated values of the metric might have on the asset.
The effect could go either way, bullish or bearish. One thing, however, that has generally held true is that the asset’s price becomes more volatile when the whales are active like this.
BTC Price
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $28,200, up 15% in the last week.
BTC continues to move sideways | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView
