Bitcoin (BTC) journey over the last month has been absolutely phenomenal as the world’s largest cryptocurrency trades close to $18,000. Surging over 60%, BTC has caught the attention of retail investors and institutions alike. While big financial institutions and billionaire investors have joined the Bitcoin mania in recent times, the fact remains BTC whales still dominate the Bitcoin (BTC) price movement and ownership.
Citing research from Flipside Crypto, Bloomberg reports that 2% of the anonymous crypto ownership whale accounts – tracked back to the Bitcoin blockchain – control a whopping 95% of the Bitcoin supply. Bitcoin whales are investors holding a huge quantity of Bitcoin and thus hold the power to dictate its price movements.
Eric Stone, head of data science at Flipside noted that with the recent BTC price rally, “the concentration in the hands of the largest accounts has also risen”. He further added:
“While whales continue to be a significant force behind the overall BTC market, it is always challenging to ascribe a narrative to a particular price swing. The most likely whale story today is that they’ll cautiously liquidate relatively small amounts of BTC over time, rather than risking a supply shock by liquidating larger chunks all at once.”
The Flipside report further notes that out of the 2% of the anonymous ownership accounts, whales own 92.4%. The remaining 7% is in control of the crypto exchanges. A year back, the whale concentration was 0.1% less at 92.3%.
Bitcoin Miner Revenues Back to Pre-Halving Levels
In another report from data analytics firm Glassnode, the Bitcoin mining revenue is back to its pre-halving levels before May 2020. The fourth Bitcoin halving event in May cut the mining rewards from 12.5 BTC previously to 6.25 BTC post having. However, just as the price of BTC has increased with more miners going online, the mining rewards have returned back to previous levels.
#Bitcoin miner revenue is back at pre-halving levels.
Chart: https://t.co/Ao9DodRwqi pic.twitter.com/PwUHPaKz8L
— glassnode (@glassnode) November 18, 2020
Another interesting report from QCP Capital notes that the recent crackdown by Chinese authorities on local crypto exchanges and miners has fueled the Bitcoin price rally. With the rise in BTC demand on one end, the crackdown has resulted in a supply crunch as miners as unable to liquidate their holdings for cash. This rising gap of BTC demand and supply has further fueled the Bitcoin price to go northwards.
However, Chinese crypto reported Wu Blockchain has negated this theory. In the below thread, Wu Blockchain explains the misunderstanding about the Chinese miners and how they are now moving to the U.S. and Kazakhstan.
A few days ago I wrote a report about Chinese miners being troubled by frozen cards and unable to pay electricity bills. There were two serious misunderstandings in overseas. First is that Chinese miners are shutting down, second is Chinese miners cannot sell BTC so price rised pic.twitter.com/Gd5nLSAQKI
— Wu Blockchain（Chinese Crypto Reporter） (@WuBlockchain) November 18, 2020
