Vanishing Bitcoin Whales: These Investors Are Holding Strong

• While whales appeared uninterested, retail investors appear to be interested in Bitcoin.
• Bitcoin activity declines, but BTC’s market cap dominance increases.

Glassnode’s data showed that an all-time high in the number of addresses holding more than 0.01 Bitcoin [BTC] had been reached. This demonstrated the significant interest that retail investors have shown in Bitcoin.

David vs Goliath

The data from Santiment can also be used to observe the interest from retail investors. Santiment claims that Bitcoin addresses with balances ranging from 0.01 BTC to 1000 BTC began purchasing more Bitcoin.

On December 15, after Bitcoin prices fell, a buying frenzy immediately followed. It appeared that several retail investors made the decision to purchase BTC at a discount after the specified date.

However, during the same time frame, the number of addresses holding 1,000 to 10,000 Bitcoins began to decline. This indicated that Bitcoin whales had begun to sell their holdings and exit their positions.

Glass half full

Large addresses seemed to be losing hope in BTC. The traders also felt the same way. Data from Coinglass shows that over the past few days, there have been more short positions taken against Bitcoin. 51% of traders had short positions against Bitcoin as of the time of publication.

The rising exchange reserve may be one of the factors causing an increase in short positions against BTC. CryptoQuant reported that the exchange reserve had kept growing, indicating that the selling pressure on BTC might get stronger.

The decline in activity on the Bitcoin network may have also contributed to traders’ pessimistic outlook. Santiment data shows that over the past few days, Bitcoin’s velocity has significantly decreased.

This demonstrated a decline in the volume of Bitcoin transfers between addresses. Along with a declining velocity, there was a decrease in the volume of BTC transfers.

But the lack of activity or trader sentiment had no impact on Bitcoin’s market cap leadership. Bitcoin has significantly increased its market cap dominance over the past month. Messari’s data showed that Bitcoin had taken 39.16% of the entire crypto market.

In addition to a rising market cap dominance, Messari reports that BTC volatility decreased by 59.51%. As a result, interested investors could purchase BTC with less risk.

It remains to be seen whether the optimism of small-scale investors outweighs the pessimistic outlook held by whales and traders.

BTC’s price had dropped by 0.03% as of the writing and it was currently trading at $16,840.85.