Crypto whales all across the board have been seemingly taking more conservative positions in stablecoins since the bear market started. This has evolved into larger holdings in dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies which have very low volatility. These digital assets have since become a safe haven for investors who are looking to escape highly volatile tokens but still keep their funds in the crypto market.
Crypto Whales Move To Stablecoins
Usually, there has been a marked increase in the stablecoin holdings of the top Ethereum whales but this trend of moving into stablecoins seems to not be localized to just Ethereum whales alone. Data shows that the holdings of whales across 5 blockchains are increasingly skewing towards stablecoin holdings.
The 5 blockchains in this report are Ethereum, Fantom, BNB Chain, Avalanche, and Polygon, and takes a look at the holdings of the top 1,000 whales. The holdings of the largest whales across all of these chains are mostly in the native tokens of the chain, but stablecoins such as USDT and USDC are increasingly important to them.
For the top 1,000 ETH whales, USDC and USDT currently account for $842 million (26.9%) and $710 million (22.7%) of their holdings respectively. BNB Chain whales leaned even more heavily with BUSD making up 41.19% ($365 million) and USDT making up 16.22% ($144 million) of their holdings.
USDT market dominance at 7.68% | Source: Market Cap USDT Dominance on TradingView.com
Fantom (FTM) whales were more into USDC with 30.75% ($12 million) of their holdings in the stablecoin, and 4.67% ($1.8 million) in fUSDT. Avalanche whales hold 74.2% ($265 million) of their holdings in USDT, and 5.68% ($20.3 million) in USDC. Polygon whales allocated the least to stablecoins with only 6.09% ($19.1 million) held in USDC.
Time To Flee For Safety?
Whale holdings and their investment trends can often sway investor sentiment because it shows what these large holders are thinking about the crypto market. Their recent move to stablecoin holdings shows that they expect the market prices to go much lower in the near future.
This is not strictly out of line given that indicators show that the crypto market has yet to see its bottom. Previous bear markets have seen the prices of digital assets such as bitcoin and Ethereum falling more than 80% each, putting the market bottom of bitcoin at around $13,000.
Given this, and the fact that the market follows the price of bitcoin, if it is not at the bottom, it is a good time to seek safe haven in these digital assets. It helps investors preserve the value of their funds while waiting for better market conditions to start reinvesting.
Featured image from Schroders, chart from TradingView.com
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