There have always been numerous rumors regarding the distribution of bitcoins. Sometimes it can be difficult to determine ownership.
However, it’s clear that there are a few individuals who own a large part of bitcoins available worldwide. These are called Bitcoin Whales. Let’s take a closer look at the so-called Bitcoin Whales and consider their influence. Let’s get started!
What are Bitcoin Whales?
First of all, you have to keep in mind that not everyone who has a lot of bitcoins can be classified as a bitcoin whale. Currently, the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies is $220 billion, Bitcoin’s share is around 64%.
Bitcoin whales currently own around $37.5 billion in bitcoin, which is more than 25% of all bitcoins available. Today, there are around 2,000 wallets that have 1,000 bitcoins or more, and there are 100 wallets that even own more than 10,000 bitcoins. Due to the fact that Bitcoin protects users’ personal data, it’s almost impossible to identify individual users.
A semi-anonymous status makes it difficult to get information about whales. It’s quite clear when, for example, whales sell a large part of their bitcoins at once. In regular transactions on exchanges, for example, the influence of bitcoin whales is rather negligible.
However, it’s clear that there are individuals as well as hedge funds among Bitcoin Whales. In the recent past, large investors bought bitcoins and held them on their wallets. These include Coin Capital & Falcon Global Capital partners as well as Bitcoin Investment Trust.
An exact definition of the ‘Bitcoin Whales’ term is therefore not clear. However, there are a few factors and features that apply to most of them. The best definition at the moment is — Bitcoin whales are people or groups of people who can cause price fluctuations due to their share on the market.
It should also be noted that crypto exchanges are certainly the largest whales — they have the largest share of cryptocurrencies in their wallets.
What is the Influence of Bitcoin Whales?
Due to a large number of bitcoins, whales have a potentially enormous impact on a trading volume of a cryptocurrency and, accordingly, on their rate. However, an unequal distribution has grown significantly. At the very beginning, there were only a small number of people who are interested in cryptocurrency at all. Therefore, in the early days, there were far more bitcoins in some wallets than, for example, now.
In the meantime, dedicated channels have even been created, which have intended to track Bitcoin Whales’ transactions. The Whale Alert Twitter channel, for example, was founded in 2018 and since then has informed about the latest transactions by whales. The channel now has more than 150,000 followers and the main aim is to inform them about what the big players are currently doing.
While the price of bitcoin has continued to rise in recent years, Whale Alert has also taken this into account. The threshold for a whale transaction was originally much lower than it’s today. For example, only transactions with a volume equivalent to $50 million are now referred to as whale transactions.
What other interesting facts about crypto whales do you know? Just share your knowledge in the comments!
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