Last year, old whales may have offloaded, but the demand for BTC remains strong, according to the latest data.
Bidders are aggressively snatching up Bitcoin (BTC) at prices near $30,000, as short-term sellers begin to exhaust their liquidity.
As of late December, Bitcoin exchanges began to shed their BTC reserves once more, according to on-chain monitoring resource CryptoQuant.
BTC conspicuously attractive at current levels
Traders sent BTC to exchanges for a period, possibly selling or having on hand to safeguard themselves against further loss, but now exchanges are seeing more outflows than inflows.
The BTC reserves of the 21 powerful platforms monitored by CryptoQuant increased from 2.396 million BTC to 2.428 million BTC between Dec. 7 and Dec. 28, 2021.
Since then, the longer-term downtrend has resumed, and as of Monday, the tally on exchanges stood at 2.366 million BTC – despite spot prices sitting at six-month lows.
According to CryptoQuant CEO Ki-Young Ju, older whales are still likely to spark price trend reversals despite showing impatience in recent years.
‘It seems they were sold at the tops or bottoms of the market,’ he said in a series of tweets about the topic, noting that institutions were likely the main buyers since 2020.
Whales go for (another) Dip
Despite being common knowledge, the exchange balance trend now coincides with palpable on-chain demand from significant investors.
Twitter account CC15Capital noted this week that multi-million-dollar BTC buy-ins accompanied the run to $33,000 from one wallet in particular.
Since August, the account has accumulated over $1 billion worth of Bitcoins from a starting balance of zero.
A further reason for the phenomenon may be the firm refusal to sell by long-term holders. As Cointelegraph reported, coins that have not moved in a year or more now make up 60% of the overall BTC supply.
Whale accumulation, meanwhile, has been apparent elsewhere in the period following the comedown from $69,000 all-time highs.