Thread by @mrjasonchoi

Are whales cashing out of $BTC?

What about $ETH?

Let's take a look at the data.

1/ From the run up from $17K - $60K, addresses with more than 10K $BTC have been falling.

From January to April when $BTC almost doubled in price, there was a roughly 10% reduction in mega whales.

Because the number is so low and may contain exchange addresses it's a bit fuzzy.

2/ Addresses with >1K $BTC ($40M currently) is likely more representative of "whale"/ long term believers.

This was a sharper bunch and basically started selling around $38K, all the way to the top.

3/ So if whales were cashing out, who was buying $BTC to sustain it from $50K - $60K?

As always, probably the retails, defined as addresses with >0.1 $BTC, kept buying even as price continued to move up, and consolidate under resistance.

4/ Now let's look at $ETH whales (>10K ETH addresses).

Here 10K is at market value only $26M, so it's somewhat comparable to the >1K BTC whales (more so than the 10K BTC mega whales).

Here, $ETH whales are actually accumulating into yesterday's dip, reaching almost ATH!

5/ Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, addresses with >1K ETH, are falling.

Since >1K includes >10K, it means ~10% of the addresses with between 1K - 10K ETH (2.6 - 26M) have been cashing out (and missing the recent rally).

6/ Anecdotally, I know a lot of DeFi users who cashed out last month to stables, felt horrible about missing the entire ETH run in May...

And now are buying back and basically in the same spot as their counterparts who hodl through

Two paths, same outcome

7/ However, even though whales cashing out of $BTC may sound bearish, whales often seem to sell **way** too prematurely.

In the last cycle, if you sold as 1K $BTC addresses started to fall, you miss a 30x in $BTC's run from $600....to $20K!

8/ One can argue that the last cycle was primarily driven by retail mania, so whale activity was less relevant - and that large accounts like institutions dominate the market more this cycle.

But that'd be wrong too...

9/ The supply of $BTC held by addresses with 10k-100k has actually fallen drastically from last cycle vs. this cycle.

Compare this with the 0.1-1 $BTC small fish address. It's only going one way as $BTC finds its way to more and more hodlers.

10/ So what can we glean from the above?

- Over time, there are more holders for $BTC & $ETH
- Whales are buying the $ETH dip hard!
- Whales can control price movement in short term, but long term the masses matter more
- Mega whales often sell waaay too early

ps/ Yes I realized I used "addresses" to refer to UTXO but I'm too lazy to correct it and noobs won't care about the difference in parlance

ps2/ As an aside - I think $ETH needs some time to settle after a massive run up, and panicky crypto investors likely default back to $BTC for lower vol and “safe have” in the immediate short term.

No strong conviction either way, 50:50 $BTC $ETH for now