Decade old whales selling Bitcoin hoard again; last time was during LUNA collapse

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Long-term whales that have been hold­ing their Bit­coins (BTC) for more than sev­en to ten years are sell­ing them again for the first time since the Ter­ra (LUNA) col­lapse in May, as Spent Vol­ume Age Bands (SVAB) indicate.

Spent Vol­ume Age Bands (SVAB) is a sep­a­ra­tion of the on-chain trans­fer vol­ume based on the coins’ age. Each band rep­re­sents the per­cent­age of the spent vol­ume that was pre­vi­ous­ly moved with­in the time peri­od denot­ed in the legend.

The chart above demon­strates the total trans­fer vol­ume of coins that were last active between sev­en and ten years. The chart below, on the oth­er hand, shows the same data for coins that have been stag­nant for over ten years.

Both charts start from Octo­ber 2020 and demon­strate the sell-offs on a month­ly basis. The effects of the Ter­ra cri­sis can be seen on both charts, with the spike in spent vol­umes dur­ing May. The same spike can also be seen in Sep­tem­ber 2022, espe­cial­ly for Bit­coin, which was last moved between sev­en and ten years ago.

Are whales quitting?

Whales are con­sid­ered smart mon­ey with­in the Bit­coin ecosys­tem since they have man­aged to hold through almost every bear mar­ket cycle. In addi­tion, these hold­ers have sur­vived count­less block­size wars and FUD attacks.

Whales that are sev­en to ten years old record­ed their fifth and sixth-high­est trans­ac­tion of the year dur­ing September.

Even though whales old­er than ten years didn’t record annu­al highs, the chart shows a notice­able increase in the sell-offs. Since whales old­er than a decade can under­stand the mar­ket cycles bet­ter than any cohort, their sell-offs indi­cate bear­ish sentiment.

Decrease in whales

In addi­tion to sell-offs, the num­bers also show a decrease in the num­ber of whales.

Indi­vid­u­als who hold at least 1,000 Bit­coins are referred to as whales, and their num­ber has decreased since the peak of the 2021 bull cycle, which took place on Jan­u­ary 2021. Even though it was the peak, Jan­u­ary was just the begin­ning of the bull run. Nev­er­the­less, most whales cashed out dur­ing January.

The decrease record­ed in the num­ber of whales from Jan­u­ary 2021 to July 2021 is under­stand­able due to the 2021 bull run. Between July 2021 and April 2022, the num­ber of whales increased as Bit­coin price also became some­what sta­ble between $60,000 and $40,000.

How­ev­er, Bit­coin kept falling after April 2022. Even with decreas­ing prices, the num­ber of whales dropped from 2,150 to 1,695. The last part is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing as whales tend to wait out the win­ter prices.

On the bright side

The decrease in whales and the high num­ber of sell-offs, despite low prices, indi­cate bear­ish sen­ti­ment, but there is a sil­ver lin­ing. The sell-offs and dis­ap­pear­ing whales mean that their Bit­coin is dis­trib­uted to more than one person.

This means that Bit­coin is con­cen­trat­ed among few­er and few­er indi­vid­u­als. In the long term, hav­ing a more dis­trib­uted Bit­coin ben­e­fits the retail­er and increas­es the secu­ri­ty of the network.

Post­ed In: Bit­coin, Research

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