The bitcoin addresses of so-called whales have been at their lowest for a year.
This is revealed by Glassnode’s graph that shows how the number of bitcoin addresses on which at least 10,000 BTC are stored varies over time, for a total value equal to or greater than 92 million dollars.
According to this graph, there are currently just over 100 addresses worldwide with at least 10,000 BTC, which is the minimum since June 2019, when they fell below 100.
It must be said though that many people hold their BTC on different addresses, or on centralized wallets such as those of exchanges, so this number does not indicate how many people hold at least BTC 10,000, but only how many individual addresses physically contain this figure. Of these, many belong to exchanges.
Similar levels were only seen in the past in January 2016, in the first half of 2015, or before December 2014.
Moreover, as of today, there is only one address in the world with more than 100,000 BTC, i.e. a Huobi wallet on which more than 255,000 BTC are stored.
The curious thing is that, by contrast, the number of addresses with at least 1,000 BTC, or at least around $9.2 million, is at an all-time high, over 2,100, as well as the number of those with at least 10 BTC (about $92,000). On the other hand, those with at least 100 BTC ($920,000) are approximately 16,000, well below the record set between February and March 2017, when they exceeded 18,000.
So the number of big whales decreases, but the number of big bitcoin owners increases. At the same time, there is a decrease in the number of addresses that have more than about one million dollars in bitcoin, while the number of those who have at least about 100,000 dollars in BTC increases.
According to some analysts, while on the one hand, it might be bearish to see the largest holders reduce their bitcoin holdings, on the other, it is bullish to see the market become a little more decentralized.
As the number of addresses with at least 1 BTC, or 0.1 BTC, is also growing, it can be inferred that a significant number of BTC have been transferred from relatively few whales to a large number of smaller investors.
While this should only be considered a hypothesis, as a whale rarely keeps all BTC on one address, the fact remains that these movements are unlikely to be due solely to chance, and perhaps they actually mean something.
In particular, the fact that there is now only one address in the world with more than 100,000 BTC, and that it is the wallet of an exchange, really seems to paint a picture in which the possession of BTC is not concentrating, but distributing.
Furthermore, even the total number of addresses with a balance of more than zero BTC is at an all-time high, around 30 million. Not even during the speculative bubble at the end of 2017 were there so many.
