Bitcoin Whales Continue To Shed Holdings, Prices Not Attractive Enough?

Keshav Verma

Last Updated: June 11, 2024 9:44 am

2 mins read

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On-chain data shows Bitcoin whales have continued to shave off their holdings in recent weeks, suggesting that the current lows may not be attractive enough to them.

Bitcoin Whales Continue To Sell Despite The Recent Deep Lows

As pointed out by an analyst in a CryptoQuant post, the number of investors with balances in the 1k to 10k BTC range have continued to decline recently.

The relevant indicator here is the “UTXO Count – Value Bands,” which tells us about the number of UTXOs (or wallets) that are currently in each Bitcoin value band.

These value bands are groups that define ranges between which the balances of UTXOs falling into said bands lie. For example, the 100-1k BTC value band includes all UTXOs (or wallets) that currently have between 100 and 1,000 coins.

The value band of interest in the current context is the “1k-10k BTC” group. Here is a chart that shows how the UTXO Count of this value band has changed over the last several months:

Looks like the value of the metric has taken a hit in recent days | Source: CryptoQuant

As you can see in the above graph, the Bitcoin UTXO Count for the 1k-10k BTC value band has observed some steep decline over the past month.

Wallets with such large balances usually belong to the whales. This means that the holdings of these humongous holders have gone down in this period.

This entire latest decline has come following the crash caused by crypto exchange’s FTX collapse, which means whales have sold their coins while the prices have been hitting lows.

Historically, whales have shown accumulation behavior as bear markets have bottomed out. But recently instead of seeing an increase or even sideways movement, the UTXO Count of this whale value band has been strangely decreasing.

This trend could be a sign that whales are still not finding the current lows attractive enough to buy more, and that they may rather be selling off their reserves as they expect the bearish winds to continue further.

BTC Price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s price floats around $17.2k, up 1% in the last week. Over the past month, the crypto has lost 7% in value.

Bitcoin has been stuck moving sideways around the $17k level recently, but at the moment it’s unclear when some real volatility may return to the crypto.

Featured image from Thomas Lipke on Unsplash.com, charts from TradingView.com, CryptoQuant.com

Keshav Verma

Keshav is currently a senior writer at NewsBTC and has been attached to the website since June 14, 2021.

Keshav has been writing for many years, first as a hobbyist and later as a freelancer. He has experience working in a variety of niches, even fiction at one point, but the cryptocurrency industry has been the longest he has been attached to.

In terms of official educational qualifications, Keshav holds a bachelor’s degree in Physics from one of the premier institutes of India, the University of Delhi (DU). He started the degree with an aim of eventually making a career in Physics, but the onset of COVID led to a shift in plans. The virus meant that the college classes had to be delivered in the online-mode and with it came free time for him to explore other passions.

Initially only seeking to make some beer money, Keshav unexpectedly landed clients offering real projects, after which there was no looking back. Writing was something he had always enjoyed and to be able to do it for a living was like a dream come true.

Keshav completed his Physics degree in 2022 and has been focusing on his writing career since, but that doesn’t mean his passion for Physics has ended. He eventually plans to re-enter university to obtain a masters degree in the same field, but perhaps only to satiate his own interest rather than for using it as a means to find employment..

Keshav has found blockchain and its concepts fascinating ever since he started going down the rabbit-hole back in 2020. On-chain analysis in particular has been something he likes to research more about, which is why his NewsBTC pieces tend to involve it in some form.

Being of the science background, Keshav likes if concepts are clear and consistent, so he generally explains the indicators he talks about in a bit of detail so that the readers can perhaps come out having understood and learnt something new.

As for hobbies, Keshav is super into football, anime, and videogames. He enjoys football not only as a watcher, but also as a player. For games, Keshav generally tends towards enjoying singleplayer adventures, with EA FC (formerly FIFA) being the only online game he is active in. Though, perhaps due to being ultra-focused on the game, he is today a semi-pro on the EA FC scene, regularly participating in tournaments and sometimes even taking back prize money.

Because of his enthusiasm for anime and games, he also self-learned Japanese along the way to consume some of the untranslated gems out there. The skill didn’t merely remain as just a hobby, either, as he put it to productive use during his exploration for small-time gigs at the start of COVID, fulfilling a couple of Japanese-to-English translation jobs.

Keshav is also big into fitness, with agility and acceleration-related workouts making a big part of his program due to the relevance they have in football. On top of that, he also has a more traditional strength based program for the gym, which he does to maintain an overall fitness level of his body.

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