Are Whales Turning To Defi? Wrapped BTC (WBTC) Volumes Skyrocket

Some major Bitcoin traders appear to be turning to DeFi to maintain returns on their investment, whale trading data showed on Monday. Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), an Ethereum-based variant of Bitcoin (BTC) used to invest in DeFi platforms, saw volumes spike as the crypto market sank.

The world’s largest crypto, Bitcoin (BTC) is down by over 8% in the past 7 days, dragging a bulk of the crypto market down with it. Amid this sea of red, DeFi platforms such as Curve or Anchor Protocol appear to be offering better yields.

Wrapped Bitcoin 24 hr trading volume jumps 148%

Recent WBTC purchases by Ethereum whales have pushed up the token’s 24 hour trading volume by a whopping 148%. Wrapped Bitcoin has made it to the list of most used smart contracts- a common component of DeFi- by the ETH whales in the last 24 hours.

USDT and ETH still remained the most actively used smart contracts by whales.

The biggest of the Ethereum wallets hold over $615 million worth of WBTC. It is the 4th largest token held by the whales. Wrapped Bitcoin makes 7.18% of the total holdings by the top 100 ETH whales. As per Whalestats, an ETH whale “BlueWhale0279″ added $14.29 million worth of 353 WBTC in the last 24 hours. The data depicts that the whale is holding over $58 million worth of Wrapped Bitcoin.

ETH whales adding WBTC amid market crash

As per the data, the Wrapped Bitcoin can also be seen standing in the top 10 coins purchased in the last 30 days by the biggest of the ETH whales. This directly indicates that the biggest wallets are accumulating the WBTC token on large scale. WBTC has declined by more than 3% following Bitcoin in the last 24 hours. The token is trading at an average price of $38,925, at the press time.

The Wrapped Bitcoin is down by over 6% in the last 30 days. Seems like ETH whales are aiming to buy the dip. WBTC is the 16th largest cryptocurrency with a total market value of over $10 billion.