Bitcoin Forum

That question has always been intriguing me. Reading about possible control over Bitcoin by the government, I thought about the ways how they could actually do it. One idea that came to my mind was to print enough fiat to buy all bitcoins existing and get done with it for good. But then I recalled about the top Bitcoin holders including Satoshi himself keeping their coins, and it struck me that they might not be selling their stashes just because of this, for the fear that government could easily buy up all bitcoins that are traded and turn into the biggest whale itself.

How likely is that?

At $12B market cap a government, investment fund, or bank itself could purchase the majority of Bitcoin in circulation. This technically would not be the end of bitcoin, but the scenario you propose is possible.

If they wanted to do something like that, they would need a lot more money because prices would skyrocket instantly if someone or some entity started to buy up bitcoins. But it wouldn't matter in the end just because they could print as much money as might be required to get a controlling stake in Bitcoin.

Printing a lot of money would make the value or rate of the money itself decreasing and will happen fluctuation. Fiat is now working on demand - supply, so if the supplies were just too much, the value would be decreased. Making money is not that easy, and that's why the country would prefer to take a loan from another country and not to print the money themselves

Any government or big banks can easily buy all the bitcoin currently in supply, there will be lots of hurdles for them to do this but this doesn't mean it is impossible. Also i don't see any incentive government/bank will have doing this.

Satoshi himself and many other big holders seems holding their bitcoin quite tightly not because of fear you have mentioned for sure. Talking about satoshi he will not move any single bitcoin from his known addresses because that can destroy whole bitcoin market due to fear and talking about other big holders they are just holding it as good investment. Some of them keep on cashing out profit which can't be noticed from outside because that amount is really low to make any significant move on market.

Did you just wake up from a 60 year nap or something?  "Quantitative easing" ring any bells?  The US has been printing money like there's no tomorrow,  enough to buy 21 million bitcoin many times over.

I think the key to controlling Bitcoin is not by buying out huge amounts of coins but by controlling the Bitcoin network itself. If they can shutdown or manipulate the Bitcoin network people will try to bail out and panic sell all their coins. Then the Bitcoin price will crash to the rock bottom and the government will sweep up all coins for pennies on the dollar. Going from decentralized to centralized overnight.

Governments are printing piles of money regardless of Bitcoin. Ever heard about the aeroplane money? In my view, it wouldn't hurt them as much as Bitcoin could potentially hurt them in the future unless they nip it in the bud today. For example, by buying enough bitcoins. They might have that on the agenda, but the time has likely not come yet.

I'm actually was reffering if the government are going to print money in the future and not the money which had been printed in the past.Well i can't argue that I missed things like Quantitative easing.so, pardon me if I'm wrong

A good thing is when indeed satoshi has a key to be accessed for each Government that is in it. because if that is not done then the Government will never accept bitcoin as part a recognized currency. Because the Government will surely look for comfort and security for all the funds are there, so this is something that is difficult to solve because satoshi (makers of the bitcoin) have never appeared and gave an explanation on the issue of bitcoin. Just wait and see the results

There are two types of Bitcoin whales;

1] Trading whales -

2] Holder whales (e.g. Roger Ver, Satoshi, etc) -

You are directly referring to 2] where you are basically answering the question yourself for a certain part already. The main reasons of them not selling any of their coins, or at least not a significant amount, is indeed out of fear for the government. But also the fact that they strictly believe in the future of Bitcoin, in the way that they can become some sort of an elite at some point in the far future. This definitely goes up for someone as Roger Ver.

Another reason is that a significant amount of their stash is sitting unknown in a huge number of different wallets. Imagine what would happen if the governments notice you have been declaring your wealth wrongly to the tax agency for years, and later turns out that your wealth isn't $50 million for example, but $250 million. It will be a direct hit of tens of millions $$ including fines at everything.

You can rest assured that they will print even more money in the future, and not for buying Bitcoin. Governments seem not to be particularly worried about Bitcoin existence so far because it is still too minuscule to give them a real butthurt, but things may change in the future, and then they will need all that money they have been printing. 

Not very. When you print more money it just devalues it which is exactly what's wrong with fiat. When you save cash over time you actually lose money because it is continually deflating in value. Bitcoin is the opposite and in theory your money should grow in value over time. If the gov or anyone else attempted to 'buy all the bitcoin' (which wouldn't happen) that would also just keep pushing up the value of bitcoin exponentially. If the powers that be wanted to control bitcoin they would just do so by passing laws that either make it straight up illegal to use or severely restrict its use by strict regulation.

The only way they can make it illegal is to make an international law that every country in the world would approve. I don't think this would happen, bitcoin will simply coexist with real world fiat economy from my point of view.

But that may be a lesser evil today than when Bitcoin gets a widespread usage tomorrow. And its market cap is tiny right now, so I don't think they will need to print anything at all. I'm certain that many government agencies like CIA, NSA and their colleagues in other countries have budgets which make provisions for such expenses. Regarding price going up, they don't have to buy all bitcoins, just enough to get a controlling "stake" in it, and they don't need to buy them all at once.

this is mostly another conspiracy theory in my opinion and the first important question is WHY? that these theories never think about. why would government want to do that? printing money and then spending lots of time to buy and invest lots of money ,.... none of these are easy ways. the easy way in case government wanted to go against bitcoin is simply announcing it illegal like countries such as (i think) Bangladesh!

They have to coexist there is no other way at least not for now maybe they will be in future some attempts to be accepted on everyday trades/market but for now its good as it is. If you look in BTC -> Money we all do this is some direction we eaither buy/sell. Printing money wont solve anything it will make things only worse but that is not our prob its that country/government problem.

The Government will never buy bitcoins that are already in circulation and would take the step that the Indian Government took (demonetization). They would start up their own currency via blockchain technology and make bitcoins invalid and even the Indian Government are trying to monitor bitcoin currency to see how it's beneficial for them. The other way would be making online wallets verify their users with their Government ID.

It seems like the new money is fighting the old money, and this should now be interpreted in the literal sense of the phrase.


Basically, I'm only asking as per thread title why the biggest holders of bitcoins don't spend them. My take is that they keep their bitcoins mainly because of the apprehension that government or some other entity with deep pockets could monopolize Bitcoin by buying up a lot of coins that are traded nowadays. Anyway, what is your take on this, why don't they cash out?

Cause they want the price to climb up at 1000$ before they cashout. Those who can hold thier btc even temptations is already in ,they still want to push the price to a higher level. Must be ATH!!

This is possible but I believe there are people hoarding their Bitcoin,maybe some government are considering this option one of the country that could do that are China,Russia  Us or maybe any rich arab country ,is there a system that can detect this..

12 billion dollars.




















http://www.sonatype.org/nexus/content/uploads/2014/12/c14089bcde193d6b3df135aca176f7751.jpg

In my opinion the big whales are either some big investments funds or government, cant withdraw their assets from bitcoin for some accounting reasons. As long as those assets are high they can borrow the money based on that assets.

If they would withdraw their assets the value of assets would drop and their credit ratings would drop. So its paradoxicaly that banks and loans could be the reason of relative stability of bitcoin prices.

Because they know Bitcoin can do much better. Why sell a goose that lays golden eggs?

I'm just thinking that if any country buy up majority of Bitcoin than after buying Bitcoin what will they do?
If they sell those Bitcoin then who would like  to Buy from Government?

They won't have to sell all these bitcoins, but they will be able to manipulate the prices and by doing that prevent businesses from accepting Bitcoin as payment. If prices jump every day a dozen percentages, only traders will be happy. It is basically the same thing that many central banks typically do by currency interventions to stabilize the exchange rate. But in this case, they will rather try to destabilize the Bitcoin exchange rate.

Heard of quantative easing?

They have printed alot more than $12b, global QE currently at around $12.3 trillion and counting

Does anybody know who those whales are?
Because, maybe they all did already cash out their coins, and none of them is left over to do that anymore.
It would actually be not a bad thing in my opinion, if bitcoin would be spread consistent over the bitcoin community.
Nobody should have a too big influence.

Ah the mythical whale who's evil plan is to either buy all the coins or crash the market with a huge sale at rock bottom prices. Here is why that is not going to happen.

If the whale tries to buy all the coins he will drive the price ever higher. He can't actually just buy them. He must make a deal with every person on the planet who holds BTC. To make it worse, he doesn't even know who those people are. Good luck.

Now let's say he does manage to buy a million coins for his evil plan to cause a panic. When he sells them all for a penny a piece he is going to lose huge sums of the money. It will cause a crash as long as he is selling. But when he is out of coins there is nothing to keep the price from creeping up again, and he has gained nothing.

So here is a spoiler alert. Wealthy people did not become wealthy by acting in a foolish and illogical way. They know the story of the goose that lays golden eggs and are not going to wast their time and money killing something they could profit from.  Only an "evil" whale, who cares nothing about profit, who only wants to destroy the price would do this. Even then it would be a temporary event.

Why?

Even printing out unlimited sums of fiat will not make it possible to buy all Bitcoins and that is so not because the guys like Satoshi will hold theirs, but because of the exponential rising of the price in a case of massive buying. So trying to buy all the Bitcoins they will do only good for Bitcoin.

Both alternatives can be happening. The big whales can be the nice investors or the government men. The nice investors can be holding the bitcoin to prevent the government men to buy all and start commanding the bitcoin market.
The government men can have the biggest part of bitcoins and are using this to command what will happen with the bitcoin market, maybe China, why not? Strange things happen sometimes with bitcoin price, who knows if they have influences over it?

because it's better to wait at this poit, they know this, if you were to ask the same question when bitcoin price was much lower, they would have done a mistake, also it's not very convenient for them to cash out a big amount of bitcoin, because big amount of taxes should be payed then

It's already illegal in few countries and hence it wouldn't be impossible for all countries to follow the same route.

Taxes would be applied by USA and UK as they are already keeping track of bitcoin users and they are working on those
exchanges too to see how the currency is being used online. If any misuse is found, the currency would be banned worldwide soon.

How?
I am not aware of a single law that is worldwide.

The more money the government prints the less the value of that currency will become so it's not a good idea because the value of bitcoin would be increased.
You say that Satoshi has lots of bitcoin, can someone paste a link here showing us how many bitcoins does Satoshi Nakamodo have?

That doesn't mean that such laws don't exist

The UN Security (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council) Council has "the authority to issue binding resolutions to member states". I guess that such resolutions could be loosely construed as international laws applicable everywhere throughout the world. I have heard about a few small countries that are not members of the UN, if I'm not mistaken, but I think we can safely disregard them


The exact figure remains unknown but the ~1M bitcoins estimate comes from this (https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto/) analysis

True. I don't know all the rules out there. And the UN is the largest international organization with some authority. However they have utterly failed to enforce even the most agreed upon rules. Syria is a member that drops poison gas bombs on it's own people with no repercussions. So I can't see a resolution baning BTC.
But crazy things do happen. Perhaps they would try a ban.   In that case I am going to refuse to obey. What are they going to do? Send troops from China to stop me? My own government would also be powerless to stop me. Indeed they have never really stopped me from doing what I want. It would be very easy to get enough people to disobey that a crackdown would simply not be feasible.  

The bigest whales could be keep the circulation stable, so they keep their coins. Or could be they've already spending it just listle bit constantly.
However using fiat for purpose to buy bitcoin is ridiculous decision if there are government do this, print fiat means adding the supply, when the demand is less than supply the price decrease, then fluctuation, they will not risking their wealthy for temporary fortune.

Any substantive resolution of the Security Council should be unanimously accepted by its five permanent members. If these members fail to come to a consensus while discussing such a resolution, it gets declined and thus can't be enforced, i.e. doesn't become binding to other member states (the veto power). If the rule gets agreed upon by the permanent members, it will be enforced...

And just in case, Syrian chemical weapons had been (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Syria's_chemical_weapons) destroyed according to the Security Council resolution


Maybe, they would just fire you, for a start?

How to shutdown or manipulate bitcoin network? People who have faith as big holders/miners/developers/founders won't let it happen, that's why bitcoin could last till now.
And why the he*l any government will do that to clean up bitcoin out of market, I don't think so.
We would be fine as long as bitcoin doesn't harm financial economics of the countries.

Printing enough fiat to buy bitcon? That was insane thing to do. Take note of the word inflation and the fact that why government will push on that purpose just because of bitcoin thing. It's not their priority. Why bother to control over bitcoin if they can take such actions on regulating the bitcoin exchanges. And besides they can make their own crypto which is far more wiser way than to become a big whales in bitcoin.

But like I said, with such many problems circulation in every countries financial institution, no way the goverment will focus much on taking over control on bitcoin.

I think the whales might have actually learned that it's a bad idea to liquidate everything if you're trying to sell it, as it just causes flash crashes and devalues everyone's investments. Most of them are probably selling right now, just in smaller amounts so they can reap the rewards.

Most will likely be preparing for a trough to come up sometime soon.

your question and your topic header are two different things in my opinion.
there are whales who have been investing in bitcoin and making lots of money from trading it daily and then there are what you are speculating about. for the later i have to say it has always been something that bugged many over the years and never anything bad happens and that is because government gain nothing from crashing the price, bitcoin will still exist even if there is a big price crash and people will continue using it.

We see that big whales don't sell their bitcoins. Maybe, they are selling a little here and a little there, but if some big whale from the top100 cashed out completely, we would feel it and read about it. In my view, the reason why they are not selling their stashes may be related to their fears that governments could monopolize Bitcoin, in whichever way. And I'm asking how plausible that reason is.

In my humble opinion, big whales are just true bitcoin lovers. They are not simply holding bitcoins for their benefits but they do not want to collapse the bitcoin prices that is the reason they are not moving even small quality of bitcoins for any reasons. As they are loving bitcoins, we are enjoying big price levels.

Maybe the whales are not cashing out yet is because they know bitcoin's value will keep rising until the end of the year. Maybe they have some infos that it is not the right time yet to convert their bitcoin. So we should not convert also. So all of us will gain big profit if we convert our bitcoin into higher price.

This logic is flawed. Most of the top Bitcoin whales are early adopters who mined or bought their bitcoins in 2009 through 2012. If they didn't sell out when the price was at ATH in December 2013 above $1,100 per coin, why would they wait till the end of the year? It is unlikely that the price will jump over $1,000 in the remaining weeks of this year.

All we want is that bitcoin price will go up high.,so the big whales too. And thats the reason why some of the big whales do not cash out or they are waiting for the right time,and when that time comes, huge dump could be the next.

How to shutdown the Bitcoin network? Anyone with enough resources could muster up enough hashpower to effectively launch a 51% attack and cripple the Blockchain. One could hijack the Bitcoin core team and force them to alter the code. One could outlaw Bitcoin and jail every single professional miner in the country. One could crash the market and make all holders sell their coins and quit. The list could go on and on.
The world order lets Bitcoin fly right now because it's not such a big threat. Yet.
They can always pull the switch and no one can stop them.

Do you know that there is a limit as to how much fiat currency a government can produce. If it is possible to produce or print fiat money according to the whims of the government then all schools, hospital, food should be free but it isnt. There are policies that the central bank must follow including the conditions and requirements as to the limit of producing fiat currency. And that is why your theory is not possible.

Aeroplane money, no? The whole Bitcoin market cap is around $12 billion, the price is staying above $750 per coin, and we don't know who buys all these bitcoins at that price. It may be the Chinese dudes or it may be the Chinese government liquidating their stack of the US Treasuries, which amounts to over a trillion dollars, by the way.

The government to buy all bitcoins and turn into the biggest whale?Really?

If the government becomes the biggest bitcoin holder,nobody will use btc anymore and btc price will

be close to zero.

I dont think about it. Imo its just they want to have more btc to hold. Rich wanted to become more richer and thats a common in this world. Also they wouldnt want the price to fall to bottom again. They have invested so much time and money on that thing.

Obviously, they don't need to buy all bitcoins that are currently traded. And maybe there is not much sense in doing that just because there is already a short list of Bitcoin holders who have hoarded many millions of bitcoins. That said, government may be specifically looking for such an effect with the purpose of making Bitcoin utterly useless, but certainly not today.

Well if that happen that someone will try to control bitcoin,and for example it will become expensive then it is a signal for another altcoin to become mainstream and shine.Since people will have difficulty to owed a bitcoin, tendency is that they will be using altcoin and there are many options. :)


If it happens, surely it will pull the bitcoin price downward, it will affect it but i think it will recover faster. Or, as one suggested the whales are slowly selling their bitcoin without our knowledge as someone suggested.

No, the government can't just print out fiat and then buy bitcoin or something, by printing more fiat it going to cause inflation in the country, it is going to make the value of the fiat to go down, and if the value go down to sharp all the economic will falter, so the government can't just buy bitcoin and the control bitcoin and besides of that if the government bought bitcoin it's going to mean that the government already accepted bitcoin as the currency

whales are not cashing out because bitcoin is extra bull right now

Some of them may have lost their private keys - good for the rest of us ;D

That may be quite unlikely as it would have to be separate governments buying the Bitcoins. If somewhere like Riussia started to buy bitcoin on a large scale then the US may attempt to buy a greater amount in order to remain more powerful than the russian government.
If the governments buys bitcoins then they can do very little with them other then just hold or sell them, meaning that the price of bitcoin for everyone else would go up as there are fewer bitcoins in circulation.

May be they also waiting for the big pump would happen to btc or they already sell it bit by bits when the price increasing slowly, we don't know what they already thinking

That is wishful thinking.  :D
They might be bullish in the medium to long-term. Unlike the rest of us, big whales don't have any immediate requirement of funds and can afford to hold for the long-term.

There is no reason to print fiat money to buy bitcoins. The governments in cooperation with banks will create their private block chain systems with their own crypto currency. Already such an idea has implemented by an Estonian bank LHV the largest independent Estonian bank was the first bank to experiment with a kind of programmable money €100,000 worth of cryptographically-protected certificates of deposits. http://www.cuber.ee/en_US/news/

They just keep it and wait until the value of bitcoin rise.. and some other make  it into business but into bitcoin too.,

This may be the case. I daresay they have to resist most seductive temptations that are ever possible. Many of these big holders seem to be early Bitcoin adopters anyway, so they walked all the way up and down with Bitcoin. It would be interesting to hear from them, what they have to say in regard why they are not spending their coins. Does anyone have a link to an interview with one of them which throws some light on the matter?

Youre right,almost all the btc holders is waiting for that price,they will not make any move until the value reach thier desired price. So for now lets enjoy earning btc and hold it until that very special day of bitcoin.

They keep in holding it because maybe they want to control the price of bitcoin. They know about their doing so that nothing to worry because i know they keep it to increase the price of bitcoin this coming years.

There is certainly something else to it just because all those big-time whales can't be waiting for the same price. And which price is it, one million dollar for bitcoin? In my view, it has more to do with the feeling of being an early adopter as such, in some sense being a founding farther of Bitcoin. Selling the most of bitcoins would obviously be a sort of betrayal then even if the price is high and lucrative.

Look at Roger Ver, he has made a fortune off of Bitcoin. He is still active in the community and trying to influence the coins future. Once people are no longer concerned about money or wealth they move towards the other thing that people desire power and influence.

Perhaps some of the "big whales" aren't simply in this for profit and are deep advocates of the coin so their decision to hold is not affected by price.

 Of course, if this were true then we'd also see them releasing small amounts slowly to new users to encourage adoption. I have read and received myself one time small anonymous dust from an account that had massive transactions. Maybe it was from a whale=)

I agree. We were witnessing something like that in the December 2013 - February 2014 period. It wasn't one person or several big whales responsible for the rise but rather many newcomers to the Bitcoin world, but the picture we had was very similar to what would happen if a government would try buy all Bitcoins.

They could just go after a few exchanges or dark markets and grab the coins directly, like they did with the Silk Road operation. These actions would cause the price to plunge, and that is the perfect timing to start buying up Bitcoin if they were really into this. The FBI was auctioning the bitcoins they took from Ross Ulbricht, but how can we be sure that these auctions were not Illusory transactions to make us believe that the government is not really interested in taking Bitcoin under control?

The Bitcoin market capitalization isn't much for the Governments and other large investment banks to buy. They could team up as well and we could possibly see a lot of the Bitcoins being bought, but then think if a scenario where several minute chunks of Bitcoin are owned by millions of people around the world and they'd have to buy this amount from each of us to even succeed. They'd have to make an offer so good that we'd want to sell it to them, but if I'd have realized that Bitcoin was so valuable considering what they did offer, I'd step back and hold onto mine. Most big whales also look at long term investment as a future investment and they store it as one of their portfolio of funds instead of encashing them all.

Big whales seem to be the major obstacle to controlling Bitcoin by the government if they ever wanted to do it by buying big chunks of coins. If the whales are not going to cash out anytime soon, which seems to be the case, it doesn't make a lot of sense to go hunting for smaller game. It would be a waste of resources and money.

What you are also telling is true that when they got bitcoins from silk routes then why they wanted it to auction it when they want to ban bitcoin , they could destroy this bitcoin so that it should not go to market and get circulated but it was just a view to know that how many of them are in bitcoins. If any government wants to control the bitcoin then surely they have to have more then 50% control of the market bitcoins and above that they first should have control over the bitcoin and blockchain technology.

The % of big whales cashing out is probably less vs normal persons cashing out.  To get into bitcoin in the first place for a large amount you have to be pretty serious about it and already smart/successful.  The average person is none of these things in reality and probably more flakey hopping from different things which catch their attention.

The people that hold the most amount of bitcoin don't want to cash it out  because they think that if they release all the bitcoin governments will take control of it and bitcoin will eventually disappear, some of them think that the price will keep going up and they get greedy but the price is going up because some parties want to trick people into selling and spending bitcoin so it will disappear.

yes and this is what the people do with their bitcoin in their wallet, they wait for increasing of the price so they can make sweet profit and its really worth to hold it for some of the time. or they make trading in altcoins to give support for the altcoin and make increasing to with altcoin price.

If a government tried to buy up a huge amount of Bitcoins, it seems like it would drive the price up. Also, there are many people that are probably just holding Bitcoins as a long term investment and won't sell anyway.

it because they know that bitcoin price will be increase and they will know that they are the reason and they want to make a good profit once they sell off their coins In india bitcoin price is quite high they are buying + 15% of price there are chance that bitcoin will hit 1000$ this comming 2017

Yes, that is why big whales remain big whales because they know when to attack the bitcoin ,how they play with it in their hands, but for sure some of their money is in investment for more money to come and income generate.

They would most certainly buy Bitcoin whenever there is panic selling, for example, right after the Bitfinex incident, when the price dropped almost 150 dollars. Right now I tend to think that whales not wanting to part with their bitcoins is one of the reasons why governments might stay away from the attempts of buying up bitcoins. If my memory serves me correctly, Satoshi himself said that he was going to keep his bitcoins for the fear of governmental interference with Bitcoin in the way I talk about.

Almost all the predictions I have read in the last time point to a raise in bitcoin price next year.
I think that whales would not be whales if they didn't konw the right time to buy, or to sell.
So if none of them is selling, it's another sign for me that we can expect 2017 to be a good year for bitcoin!

They do, and when they do, the market is affected so hard. We've all experienced that heavy downtrend 2 years ago. It's not that the market is stagnant but rather, some whales are still trying to liquidate everything they have before moving forward and build another pump.  Also, they wouldn't pull out what they have in btc. It's what makes them some substantial amount of money.

You would be surprised, of how many rich guys just cant fail. Lets take for example a Trump. The guy bankrupted 6 times. You would think that he should be broke. Nope. He knows the right people hence he cant be broke. Rich people do as many if not more mistakes as poor people do. They just cant fail and thats deeply pathological.

I didn't know that Trump had filed for bankruptcy 6 times. Are you sure that you are not confusing him with someone else? Regardless of how many times he actually went bankrupt, we can't be 100% certain that his bankruptcies were for real and not serving the purposes of tax evasion or something similar. We could easily expect such things from someone as cynical a businessman as Donald himself.

Big whales are the reason why pump and dump occured.
Be thankful for them for making bitcoin increases its value. They are the reason of expanding bitcoin's market as bitcoin's volume increases. Let's just be positive for bitcoin guys. Let its value grows up as time goes by.
Then sel

Why would whales cash out, even if they hade made 300% from their investment? Bitcoin will get more halvings, and price of bitcoin its expected to reach 1000 dollars, and in the near future keep stable and cross the last big mark bitcoin had, maybe for some people those will be enought, but whales does makes a life with bitcoin, soo until they reach their goal they wont left and drop their coins.

I don't think it is a correct approach to what superwhales might be thinking. if they had been actually thinking like you assume. they would have cashed out long ago. Obviously, they are in Bitcoin not for profits which are measured in dollars. They might be waiting till Bitcoin is being used as a currency, and then they will turn from old superwhales into new superich. After that, they would be able to enjoy the life as only true deep pockets can, and they will do it with bitcoins and not dollars.

bigwhales had already cashed out after they bought plenty of zcash  :D

We can't be sure 100% in anything, but we can use logic and thus make assumptions which more or less make sense. What they sold (or were pretending they are selling it like you said) was the amount of BTC which is below 50,000. If someone wants to "take Bitcoin under control" that amount would be insignificant for that purpose.

Of course, it won't be enough, but if I remember correctly, they auctioned more than 144,000 bitcoins in total, which they had seized from Ross Ulbricht in 2013. But if they were selling these bitcoins to themselves, we might as well expect them to buy bitcoins directly in the markets, for example, after panic attacks as it happened with the Bitfinex hack. I'm not going to say that they provoked these panic sellings or stole Bitfinex bitcoins, but who knows?

Whenever shit happens, blame the government, and you won't be wrong.

they are dumping back zcash to buy bitcoin, take a look at coinmarketcap, there is not a single alt that is not dumped, and guess where all thtat dumping go? to bitcoin, another reason why the price is skyrocketing

The answer which came to my mind is that they do not sell their coins because they know about the future of bitcoin and they know that in the future its value will increase much higher and if they will keep their coins for more longer then they will be millionaire with their bitcoins. It is a chance for them to be the most wealthy persons of the world with their bitcoins.

They are not with a reason big whales, they will only cash out on a very good price most likely over the 1000 dollar they will.

They are not cashing our because they treat this as a business and want to continue earning. It's easy to understand, one time big time does not apply here, they are reach and they have different mentality from us.

I am no big fish, but as someone who has an average price of under $300 per bitcoin, I don't really feel the urge to sell.
The recent rise has been slow and steady, I expect that if the price starts to fall, it will also move quite slowly.

I don't expect to be at a paper loss anytime soon, hopefully ever, so I am happy to sit and wait.  I am not buying at the moment, but I am not selling either (gold parity might change my mind though)

Yeah i got that point. Every bitcoin price rising those altcoins are always getting dumped and no matter how much the current marketcap and how strong the communities or popular it's they can't avoid to be dumped and it's seems that those traders are only being active to trade altcoins when the price of bitcoin are quite low. when it's high then they will seek for profit on bitcoin margin trading first

Your break-even price is under $300 per coin, and you are still not going to sell your bitcoins. What about whales then who didn't buy their bitcoins at all but mined them in the early days of Bitcoin, when it was still possible to mine coins on an average desktop computer in the thousands? The cost of these coins is negligible, so any real price would mean huge returns for all these people.

I'm not an advocate of blindly holding regardless of price or life situation, but at the moment I don't need to sell. I am well into profit and I have had all of my coins for over 1 year so can sell tax free.
If I need some fiat, I will sell. I wouldn't sell for fiat if the price was $200.  I won't buy now, but if it was $200 for BTC I would.

People sitting on huge piles of Bitcoin from mining years ago should be wealthy now. If they are living at home and from paycheck to paycheck so that they can hold their BTC, that is stupid.
I would assume that they have already done pretty well out of Bitcoin, are at least quite well off, own a house and car, have no debt, can vacation regularly etc.

Now they have no real need to sell, so hold in the hope of further appreciation.

If you are young though and have life ahead of you i say take a chance and hold out for big figures.  You get 1 chance in life right? you can play other areas of your life safe to give you that shot with BTC.

I don't think that we get only one big chance in our life. There are a lot of chances that could make it heaps better. If you think that way and you think that you already lost your only chance, you are basically setting yourself on losing other chances which may come up in the future and might in fact turn out to be even more beneficial or profitable in the long haul.

The exchange rates are slowly approaching the 4-digit mark. Once that happens, we will witness a lot of people selling all or part of their holdings. $950 - $1,000 is going to be a very tough resistance level for Bitcoin.

They are not cashing out because they are whales not only in bitcoin but in other fields of life businesses like the owner of microsoft and facebook also have a high amount of their money invested in bitcoin and for their needs they do not require to cashout their bitcoins so they are waiting for the time when bitcoin will be the champion of currencies and businesses.

Do you have any evidence for this? Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of FaceBook has always taken a negative stance towards Bitcoin. Same with the Microsoft owners as well. Had they taken a positive stance, then Bitcoin would have been accepted in far more websites and shops by now.

Just to make sure - governments (or the financial institutions) don't really print money in it's literal sense. They stopped doing this a long time ago. The system is much more complicated but basically money is "generated" just by typing in the amount of it in a computer.

Some time ago I heard some dude claiming here that Microsoft had been accepting bitcoins for their services, or some of their services. But I didn't see it myself nor did I see any links proving that. There were also rumors that a certain beta-tester purportedly saw Bitcoin as a payment option in one of the alpha releases of an application he had been testing. But that option was gone in the next release. Take it for what's it worth.

Printing cash is not as easy as you think, If printing cash is the solution of poverty or other world problems then why do some country needs to borrow money from the world bank?

Hypothetically speaking,  Controlling bitcoin by what OP said is possible but printing large amounts of money will only lose its value more,  This is what we called inflation that all countries are trying to avoid .
Read some article about Zambabwe .

I don't see any slow approaches for the desire of 4 digit mark today. It's still far from reality if we are to think directly in reaching the $1000 mark. No way we can boost up directly to a minimum of $1000 mark even we are sitting at the current price today.

For sure many will do some big cashouts/conversions of their bitcoin once the price hits at $900, closely to the price you mentioned. What matters here is, we are on the price that can be considered as a really high price compare back in the time when $500 is considered high price for us. No worries if it doesn't reached the new ATH as long as we are playing at close to $1000 mark.

You may want to read how the Union government had been devaluing greenbacks during the American Civil War, when they created over 400 million dollars to finance the war. Would that amount to a few hundred trillion dollars today? All countries basically do the same in case of calamities or warfare. And if Bitcoin is to become such calamity in the future, printing a few dozen billion dollars may turn out to be the less evil in the end.

Also, read about the aeroplane money.

I don't consider myself a whale, LOL!  I invest a percentage of my long term growth into BTC.  There is no amount that I have seen yet (not even close) that would cause me to sell my BTC portfolio.  I may even leverage other investments during those times the price dives a few hundred because I stand ready for using "timing" to my advantage.  I post this in this thread because you can't answer for a whale unless you know who he is.  Big investor, just a luck early adopter, early big mining operator, etc ... ?  Depending upon the lifestyle of the "whale" it might become apparent why he is not dumping coins.

What I find amazing along this line of questioning is when I read that 60 % of coins mined have NEVER moved.  Don't know if its true, but that amazes me more than whales not dumping coins.

Methinks, we could still guesstimate who is a big whale. Early big mining operators are the same as early adopters just because being early means circa 2009-2010 when there hadn't yet been an established market for Bitcoin. Early adopters couldn't buy many bitcoins back in those days, they could only mine the coins themselves. Mt. Gox was launched in July 2010, but it didn't rise to fame at once, I think. In this manner of thinking, big investors also don't pass as really big whales, maybe, only a couple of them such as the Winklevoss twins. Therefore, the big whales are mostly early adopters, and this partially explains why they are not selling their coins. They want to be the new wealthy elite when Bitcoin takes over the world, and their bitcoins become money on their own.


Yes, I also heard this.

Interesting thought. So those who have a lot in btc don't exchanging it, because thus they protect it from the governmental control? I doubt any government would buy so many bitcoins. It is too risky for their own economical situation in the country, their own currency will fall and the the btc will fall, because it is all theirs.

Why would they buy it, bitcoin is shady in their eyes because it's the favorite of the criminals for illegal transactions and the government does not want to involve in shady transactions but they regulate the law to combat that kind of activity.

chances depending on your struggle, if you are strutting hard you can get more and more chances, therefore we can say that working hard is the key to success.

As described working hard is the common rule for success in the past. Right now things were different, to be successful work hard can be found effective to some extent, smart work seems to be the best of earning.

In fact all the people who know about bitcoin are expecting bitcoin to raise to a high price, but I think no one can give a solid reason that when the price of bitcoin is increasing so much and how long they will be expecting bitcoin to raise too high in future, everyone is just expecting this based on the basic limited supply of bitcoins. They are holding their bitcoin to the time when bitcoin will be trading above 1000 USD or may be more.

Maybe they have some really big plans for it in the near future. We may not know it but let's join them on what they do. If they still don't sell their bitcoin then it will definitely spike in the near future. Let's just hodl our bitcoin while we can now so we can earn big profits once we sell it in a more higher price.

Even if they have big plans, the government may have even bigger plans, and in these plans there may be no place for Bitcoin. Apart from that, if we just thoughtlessly hold our bitcoins, and then one of these big whales finally makes up his mind and massively cashes out, for example, because of contingency or some other unfavorable situation, we will be indirectly paying him, by buying or holding now.

They will cash out when they hit the price they are going for and tbh they have probably been cashing out all the way up and will dump into oblivion anytime now.

Most of us are probably going to live a few more decades. Imagine yourself as a whale, if you're going to dump your coins, you're not going to dump all of them at once. You dump it whenever you feel like it or whenever you think that the price is relatively high. You're going to live long enough to see the price of bitcoin increase a lot, there's no reason for you to sell all your coins at this price unless you need some serious cash in real life.

I do agree as a whale you will try to maximize their portfolio, knowing bitcoin halving of 2016 and 2020 whales wouldnt cashout unless they need the money for something. Those are people that are able to make huge ammount of money with a small change at crypto currencies.

yeah but whales are those people with 100k bitcoin, or at least 10k, they can in theory leave with 1k bitcoin for the rest of their live, so there is no reason for them to hold the other 9k or 90k bitcoin, this is the point of the Op imho, and it's right, maybe they are just too greedy and with be very very rich and famous in the future

Yes that is right to say the big whale have big investments, maybe more than our expectation, and they do not need it to change it into fiat or to use it online to fulfill their needs, therefore they can hold their bitcoin for a long time. May that is the reason that they are not going to sell their bitcoins.

It's wrong to assume that someone with tens of thousands of coins could live their entire life with 1000 BTC. Mainly because of the fact that their living standards being way higher than the standards of the average person. But then again, if you just live your entire life as a stingy person, then yes, you don't have to work anymore with around 1000 BTC ~ $790,000.

Big whales is surely cashing out on every pumps that happen but they don't cash out all of their assets in bitcoin that easily. They don't do that mainly because they see potential that bitcoin's price will rise more and because of it they still buy some when the price is low for them. Also if they dump their coins it will cause a huge price dump IMO so Ill rather not see it soon.

Well, I didn't think about it in this way really, but I agree with you that if you have 100K bitcoins and don't have as much wealth in dollars, it would be reasonable to convert at least half of your wealth to fiat and then watch patiently how Bitcoin takes over the world. There is another reason that just came into my head. This might as well be kinda pissing contest among top Bitcoin holders, which rank you will get in the future Bitcoin world.

This people has no satisfaction and that amount could be big to us but they will continue to work it to grow, I have a little contentment because I just want to live a simple and peaceful life, so my goal in the crypto is just to earn 100 BTC then I stop.

We can't know that for certain. To be honest, I think there are different people among cryptowhales, some of them might be quite content with what they had mined many years ago and don't want to trade or buy more bitcoins at all. Some may be the opposite of the first, and they can be greedily adding to their stack of bitcoins like there's no tomorrow. The common denominator is that, though, they all don't seem to be particularly predisposed to get rid of their stashes in their entirety.

yes agree with you, i also think that the big whale have do not need to use their bitcoin as the do not feel to do so, because they have a lot of bitcoin may be more than our expectation.

To me if you feel that the big whale are no going to start selling then you must be careful and try to invest your bitcoin in so good potential investment, through this way you can keep yourself safe and can avoid risk. And when you feel the investment safe in bitcoin then you should keep investing your money in bitcoin again and again.

I feel like I don't quite understand your point. If you are holding bitcoins, it doesn't matter where you invest them because you would still bear the risk of cryptowhales cashing out and Bitcoin price collapsing due to that. It seems that there are enough big whales that could do that, therefore your investments will never be safe in this regard.

Big whales can't cashout without dropping the price to single digits. The market isn't large enough to offset significant sell offs. You'd have to sell coins at a slow trickle for months and months to safely cashout.

But that doesn't mean that they can't cash out, right? Since we don't see price falling to single digits as you assume it means either that they are not massively cashing out or that they in fact do but it doesn't affect the price so much. If you ask me, some of them might decide to cash out at the end of the day, and some of them should have done exactly that already, for example, because of contingency or similar unforeseen events. It could also be that there are no big whales as such, apart from 1M bitcoins held by Satoshi himself, or they have simply lost their keys.

Big whales are not cashing out because of the following reasons
-they want to the richest person in the world
-they want to the most powerful person in the world.
And u know the more u see the more u want .and in the near future hackers will increase a lot.

Yes, those people who are holding a large amount of bitcoin don't want to cash it out  because they think that if they exchange all the bitcoin governments will take control of it and disappear, some of them are just greedy but the price is going up because some parties want to trick people into selling and spending bitcoin so it will disappear.

The whales see it as an opportunity for them to make even more so why would they cash out so soon.
They are riding the waves as is most if not everyone else who is holding right now.
I don't think anybody is selling at this point in time.

you just too suspicious to your govenrment. is your government had ever seized someone bitcoins? . the government can't just take control of your bitcoin without reason and if you have exchanged your bitcoin in legal site then it will be fine. if you are obligated to pay taxes few percents of your bitcoin then just pay, everything will be fine

You're just being too paranoid, no government can technically accomplish this due to the decentralized nature of bitcoin. Obviously, they have already given up on this idea completely.

One of the greatest things about bitcoin is that you can't know it for a fact if there are the so-called whales or not. Surely there are those who are heavily invested in bitcoin. Needless to say they are also aware of bitcoin's liquidity levels that are still pretty low, so a massive sell-off will most likely push the price downward and this is, obviously, not something they are interested in, at least for now.

If all or most of the whales will cash out or sell all their coins then it will be affect the market and the price and it can cause for bitcoin to touch $200 again or even lower because those whales have the large amount of bitcoins and if they do panic selling or massive selling on the market then it will make bitcoin's price cheap again.

I've seen a detailed list of top Bitcoin holders somewhere in the forum with an approximate amount of bitcoins each of them holds. Of course, some of them might have lost the keys from their wallets. But that alone doesn't take anything from the fact that big cryptowhales do exist, and they hold a very large percentage of bitcoins mined till now. I will post it here if I find this list.

There are various reasons for discussing the topic, but to my knowledge and analysis there is a lot more potential in the bitcoin. Currently people are getting benefits and the big whales have a much better approach to the understanding of market. They know about the bitcoin high scope of business yet is not over.

As this user has pointed out, whales do see value in investing in Bitcoin for the far future. Regardless of what the government does to control bitcoin, it is still a speculative commodity that is used for trade. The government trying to put controls on it (which it already has done with people having to report Bitcoin assets on their tax returns) may slow some growth in the short run but not change anything in the long run. Unless Bitcoin is "banned" which seems rather far fetched, there are only stoppages in the short run not the long run.

There is still a big upside to the price of Bitcoin. Most whales will hold until the price gets into the thousands before they cash out.

Exactly! Whales have already enough money because they were rich long before Bitcoin, or they have a steady job, a place to live and treat crypto as an alternative. Many people cash out big or let it burn. A friend, who is a much bigger holder than me, told me he's not selling, because the opportunity is too big to simply take those $700 or 800 a coin and forget about it when you can take $2000 a coin in a couple years.

This week just show why no one neither big whales does wanna to cashout now, since all does believe price will get higger and better over time, soo if they can make 5-10x their investments back im pretty sure they will hold till they give up and dump their coins.

Big whales are not cashing out of the following reasons
-they want to make profit a lot .
-they think that by possesing bitcoins they Will be the most powerful people in the world.

How many coins are on all the exchanges for sale right now? At a guess it's tens of thousands. That leaves 15.9 and a bit million coins to prise out of the hands of everyone else. There'd be enough bloody minded people to charge 1 trillion dollars per coin.

You're right. Big whales are waiting bitcoins will become pricey maybe $2000 so maybe they will cash out 3 years from now and they are willing to wait bro.

We don't know what exactly the whales are thinking, only certain we know is that they are in bitcoin to make money, so there's no specific price that would make them sell their bitcoins, it is just their timing on what they are doing.

One of the reason is that they probably know that in the future there are great chances for better profits. If they are in crypto long enough, they know the potential of Bitcoin, and we have seen only a fraction of this so far.
Also, they probably don't need to do this now... perhaps some of them have already sold many Bitcoins over the past few years, so it's possible they already have enough money to live.

We can't know what's in the future, and neither can big whales. We can only hope that the potential that Bitcoin has won't be wasted in the coming years due to exchange hacks, governments bans and similar things. Regarding whales already having sold their coins, they must have been selling when the price collapsed from $1,200, and some of them seem to have just lost their stashes at Mt Gox.

Probably they are waiting for the price to sky rocket and be sky high. Probably there would be more people cashingout before the end of the year as prices might hit $1,000 before the year's end. So maybe we should watch out for that sudden increase that would make these whales sell their bitcoins. If that happen we might see a great drop too.

Honestly, there's no reason for them to cash out right now anymore. Ask yourself, if you had sufficient fiat money to live a meaningful and wealthy life, why would you convert your bitcoins into fiat right now. Maybe if you're trying to play with the price fluctuations, then you'll sell some of your coins right now but not all of them. Even though I am not a whale, I'm not going to cash out right now too because I don't really need money. The longer we wait, the better time it would be to cash out because bitcoin increases over time.

I basically agree with your opinion. I for one think along the same lines mainly. On the flipside side, though, if I lived a meaningful and successful life beside Bitcoin and still had thousands of them in my wallet, I wouldn't let them sit idly there. Of course, it doesn't mean that whales should necessarily get engaged in speculation and such things, they might not like this in the first place, but simply keeping bitcoins without doing anything about them seems really stupid to me.

Simply because whales in crypto, just like whales in fiat, tend to store, hoard and grow their wealth. Crypto whales aren't the bright eyed blockchain advocates we might think they are. They're in it for the profit and want to be in a position of profit for a long time.

I like the way you put it, but being always in a position of profit for a long time is only possible if Bitcoin price continuously grows and grew in the past. But we witnessed how the price collapsed after Mt.Gox had gone bankrupt. Some whales have lost their fortunes there, and those who wanted to be "in a position of profit" should have cashed out already when the price went over $1,000 per coin. Therefore, such cryptowhales should have been sifted away already, and the ones that remain are not here for profits or for profits exclusively.

Quite interesting topic, what i feel is that people love appreciating their assets not devaluating it, so this could be one of the reason why they re not cashing it out.
I have been buying lisk all the time even if the price is dammn high or it is fucking low like now.

No i don't think cryptowhales already left cryptoscene.  Maybe they are wiser today than way back 2013.  They had learned their lesson when majority of them cashed out and see bitcoin price got a steep dived from that action.  In my opinion, they had been cashing out but not in bulk .  Would you destroy the value of your holdings?  Of course no.  So they maybe slowly selling their holding to not affect the price of bitcoin.

But the whales of today are not the same whales as of 2013, so there is no way to say if they actually learned anything. The 2013 whales did basically nothing to acquire their bitcoins, they were just lucky to be in the right place at the right time. We would call them early adopters. The second generation whales like Winklevoss bros had to buy their stashes, therefore they are certainly different and more experienced in finances.

to me i think they have such a good amount of bitcoins as well as fiat currency that they never feel the need to exchange their bitcoin into fiat to fulfill their need and they may also be thinking about the price of bitcoin to raise too high therefore they are also not going to sell their bitcoins.

Yes they may also be waiting for the price of increase, as if they start selling bitcoin it will effect the market a little, just for some time and after that the price will again start increasing, so they are waiting for the price to reach  to some high price and then they start selling their bitcoin gradually.

If there's something I've learned in the few months that I'm in crypto, it's that the whales are in no hurry, and they know Bitcoin's potential very well. In addition to the large holdings, they certainly also have money invested in exchanges, so they do not lose the profit possibilities that exist riding the waves in the market, especially now that we are in moments of high volatility.

Another reason why they might not want to cash out their piles of bitcoins is possible tax implications that could be caused by massive sell-offs. Even if they are able to get a decent price at the peak of demand for bitcoins, they might have issues withdrawing so much cash. Smaller exchanges may just run away with their coins, the bigger ones may want to know where these bitcoins come from in accordance with the KYC policies and then report to the IRS and their likes.

This might be one of the reason, and furthermore, I think whales today are great trader, after so many years of experience trading bitcoin, they already known the strategy to cash out without affecting the BTC price value  and accumulate to the point they will not overshoot the price at their loss.  Im pretty sure the cause of the dip are whales cashing out then rebuy at the lower price.

I think the governments are not going to buy bitcoin, they can only think about bitcoin that how to legalize it.
They will give opportunities to their people to trade bitcoin and use it as currency, if they really honest to bitcoin and want it as a global currency of the world.

Could be many reasons.

Bitcoin is deflationary with a set cap of 21m and operates outside of govt control. In the current economic climate (currency controls, cash bans, debt / QE induced bubbles) any significant stake has the potential to increase in value enormously. Short to medium term things are looking very positive so if you have a big stake why would you cash out?

My current thinking is that bitcoins use case is becoming clearer as a store of value in a crisis. Look at the spike in interest in India, Venezuela. Users in the West don't as yet have the incentive to use bitcoin as our regular methods work fine, unlike these other places. If some of the larger national or global debt bubbles implode I think bitcoin will see a massive tidal surge of interest (and therefore increase in price). On top of that, the tech continues to be recognised as a breakthrough. If the ETF gets approved then the big money can gain exposure without the stigma or regulatory burden of buying directly.

You must be joking right? you think governments are giving their people free pass that easy on bitcoins? they are monitoring trades bigger than 1k+ bitcoins  and will take action to collect their tax money if needed rest assure.

a free pass to use & participate but not a tax free path. Most people will probably be happy to pay tax when they exchange sell. For others they may wish to obfuscate their activity. Others may hold and only sell when bitcoin reaches a price much higher than today, in which case they will head to the most bitcoin friendly jurisdiction. It is a blurry future in this regard, but if you hold 1000 btc and the price is 5k, it would be a no brainer to take up residency in a friendly country for the purpose of minimising your tax.

Every government monitor any transaction that is off the limit, is it bitcoin gold silver oil or something else, example is friend of mine he withdrawal more then 80K euros in bitcoin in two days they come to collect 35K tax for additional income, no matter if our government dont accept bitcoin as payment he got tax. But most whales that have been from start are on the big income from beginning they want to have more and more and for every day they have. Image the ones from start when price was nothing imagine how much they have now

Most people means more than 50% of that group of people. I don't think the number is even close to that, the majority of people here don't want to pay any taxes on their Bitcoin holdings. Such people should be in single digits, if not even just a few individuals. Really, people traded or mined their bitcoins, and now the government wants to take part of their profits, especially if it is well known that the authorities are not very friendly toward Bitcoin all in all. Why would anyone want to share their profits with someone who did nothing good regarding Bitcoin?

I would even add that why would one share a take of the profits he gained because he was clever ? I'm formerly against any type of tax, because it has no purpose. Well, if you could pay the taxes in Bitcoin, that might do it, but in case you'd cannot, I don't any reason to give it by yourself.

Bitcoin is definitely not a tool for tax evasion. If caught, you get the same punishment as all tax cheats.
One reason for whales not cashing out could be that they are looking for favourable capital gains treatment or are just waiting for losses in other parts of their portfolio to offset these gains.  ;D

This may be a good reason why big whales are not cashing out after all. Correct me I'm wrong on this, but in the US Bitcoin was legally considered as a property or commodity last time I checked, and there seems to be a specific term, maybe 1 to 3 years of possession, after which the capital gains are not taxable. Could anyone specify the exact terms for tax exemptions in this case?

Terms for taxation aren't the same in every country, when you cashout you have to be careful on where you do it. If you're from the EU, you can open a bank account in any EU country.

I believe an US citizen can open a bank account in an other country which is more favorable (this is exactly what do the rich to stay rich)

In the Eurozone Bitcoin is not taxable because it is like a foreign currency, and the income obtained from currency conversion operations is not taxable there. I may be wrong on this, but that's what I heard from people here. In any case, even if Bitcoin is not a tool for tax evasion, many users are not going to pay any taxes for the profits they have earned with Bitcoin.

Bitcoin can be used as a tool for hiding your wealth, there by evading income tax. I don't know how many people are using Bitcoins for such a purpose, but saying that it is not a tool for tax evasion is plain wrong.

As was stated above, the most obvious answer is because they think it'll go higher but more generally they believe it can provide them something. It can be eliminating fees, hiding money, increase in the wealth...

   Therefore bitcoin is universal tool, and we can use bitcoin for different purposes. I also hold my bitcoins, many of us think it will rise, its just a question how much. Big whales are holders, they have bitcoins for trading, cashing out, but most of the coins will sit and wait couple thousand dollars mark, like I wait that just with my little amount.
    Sometimes most obvious answer is the right answer, there is no conspiracy theory behind every story.

In these moments when the economic possibilities of bitcoin are becoming a reality, even the big speculators must be very cautious when making a move that could potentially ruin everything. I trust that even the big whales can sometimes be wise in making decisions about their investments.

I do believe those whales of bitcoin are investing into some altcoins at the moment, since the most great altcoins are getting a lower value as the price of bitcoin keeps growing, one of them it eth, it had lost 200-400k value on the last days, soo im pretty sure a pump at some good altcoins will happen soon, as the bitcoin value should drop once again, and if not people will pump the altcoins as always they do.

Printing that amount of money will create inflation which will increase the price of bitcoin and if some entity a bank or government began buying bitcoin like crazy then the price will become even higher, smaller holders may sell their coins but the ones holding huge stashes may decide to hold since they will understand what is happening.

If time will come that banks will hold bitcoins then it's a positive signal for us to follow them as well. They see great success for bitcoin and that gives us confidence to follow their actions.

If you ask me, this is unlikely. Really, if they don't cash out when Bitcoin price is over 900 dollars per coin and don't want fiat, why would they want some junk altcoins? It seems to be a common opinion that cryptowhales hold their bitcoins waiting to become super rich in the future, and they have already written fiat money off in their mind, so would they even think about alts in that case?

the whale traders (not holders) will ride btc up and at some stage put aportion into alts. if alts go on a tear the returns go 10 - 100x - see litecoins $2 - $50 or ETH before the DAO.

You talk about whales, though you actually mean some small traders with a few bitcoins at most. Whales hold thousands of bitcoins, and investing in altcoins big time involves an insane amount of risk for them and their finances, while investing small is simply not worth their time. If they can steadily and safely make a percentage or two with Bitcoin, as you seem to assume, it doesn't look very plausible they will be interested in anything else.

Maybe the whales are not cashing out because they already have cash, better cash.  ;)

It is not that unlikely in my opinion, the whales could use a small portion of their holdings and get some altcoins since right now everyone is dumping them, they could do that waiting for a price increase on those coins and earning some profit out of it they sell and then they buy bitcoin again.

to me actually they are also waiting for the price increase and if they are not cashing out its mean that still there is some more potential in the price of bitcoin before the market correction, i think this mean that still there is time to invest your money in bitcoin.

No I don't mean small traders that hold a few bitcoin; try reading what I wrote before you spout off. I mean whale traders with large positions (lets say hundreds - thousands) who cycle into and out of trends. They don't sell everything but send a portion into alts to increase their holdings in an alt run up. Then they cycle back to bitcoin or take profits in cash.

edit: also as mentioned above, some big holders move into altcoins, at least in part. Monero or Eth for example. Not because they don't want fiat or are waiting for bitcoin, but because alt run ups provide massive profits. Again, look at the ICO price of ETH and its high.

Yeah, that's why they are called whales for they are big people who are already rich enough so they don't have to do it. Since they have sufficient cash for using it with their daily lives and it is a dual purpose to them. While they still have enough cash, they use to hold it and waits for more further price increase that will satisfy them and when the price is seemingly decreasing that's a sign that they are already selling.

Maybe there is still time to buy BTCs now, but it's risk. The price increased a lot in small time intervail, I believe the price can drop anytime and a lot. Some people like to risk, they could still buy Bitcoins now, but I personally don't think it's a good idea, for me now it's time to wait and watch what happens, the price will probably decrease soon, so the most recommended advice I can give is to don't buy BTCs now, only if you want to take the risk.

The money are spread in many different cryptocurrencies and this sometimes is good for bitcoin and much better for exchanges which is a very profitable "industry".

If some entity started to try to buy up every bitcoin, this would send the price sky high, the more they tried to buy the more expensive they would get, i dont know the math but i would guess that it would soon become impossible.

Whales are big time traders. I reckon the risk of selling now and buying back later is not worth it.
With the world economy crashing on some fields; oil, steel, stocks, currencies (EUR) they know now is not the time to sell. With this speed, we don't have to wait till 2020 to double, because it may come earlier (a doubling of the price).

Remember in 2015 bitcoin outperformed every single currency (even the swiss currency and gold). The same applies for 2016. So why abandon a winning 'team'

Whales and traders are waiting for bitcoin to cross 1000$ price before making a big move. Dumping huge bitcoin will be thier next move and every holders will get panic.

I carefully read what you wrote. The question was about whales investing in altcoins, and I speak about that point exclusively. I hope you will do the same. I'm not questioning that whales might be deeply involved in Bitcoin trading, but I don't see any plausible reason why they would ever want to trade altcoins unless they create an altcoin themselves. Alts are too risky given the number of bitcoins they hold, while investing dust, according to their scale of values, would be a waste of time for them.

We can never know how the price will change in the future or how people are accepting bitcoin, which makes it hard to take the decision of investing 1000$ in buying bitcoin that may fall in the term of price and it will take a lot of time for it to reach its highest price peak, I think it might be a little risky to invest too much into it.

Why the big whales are not cashing out? Simple, They want more and more expensive price for bitcoin. Just think if you own more than a thousand of bitcoin and the price is nearly 1000$ but you believe and you are very confident that bitcoin price will be higher and higher after a few years so it will be enough for a smart whale to continue hodling and just be patient because someday our patience will pay off.

Now you're being disingenuous.

I was replying to your answer to the quote:

"I do believe those whales of bitcoin are investing into some altcoins at the moment, since the most great altcoins are getting a lower value as the price of bitcoin keeps growing, one of them it eth, it had lost 200-400k value on the last days, soo im pretty sure a pump at some good altcoins will happen soon, as the bitcoin value should drop once again, and if not people will pump the altcoins as always they do."

(which you snipped from your last reply).

You were saying that Im only referencing traders with a few bitcoin, not whales.

Then you snipped my reply to exclude the edit (done immediately after posting)

edit: also as mentioned above, some big holders move into altcoins, at least in part. Monero or Eth for example. Not because they don't want fiat or are waiting for bitcoin, but because alt run ups provide massive profits. Again, look at the ICO price of ETH and its high.

ETH and Monero are examples of large bitcoin holders diversifying into Alts. Risto is a bitcoin whale and he was heavily involved in Monero iirc. edit: some believe anonymity / privacy are important features, enough to invest in anyway

You may not see any plausible reason to get into alts over bitcoin. Im also a holder and don't trade much. But to say that bitcoin whales don't go into alts is flat out wrong. The 'HODL' bitcoin meme is great and has proven very successful over time but doesn't mean everybody ascribes to it.

I'm just trying to keep the thread clean and tidy, there is no evil intent as you might think. Just like you believe that Bitcoin whales are investing their bitcoins into altcoins, I'm not believing in that very much. It is just a matter of opinion really. But I tried to support my opinion with some logic. Some of big whales might actually be behind altcoins, but then again, if they just hold their bitcoins, they might not want to get involved with altcoins at all.

It could also be they don't plan to sell ever, if bitcoin is the new digital gold as some have speculated then there is no point in selling it since you already have the best you can have.

They are all watching the trade screen 24/7 one whale dump will trigger a domino effect and whales will start selling. but at this rate, everyone is waiting for $1,200 next year. probably will bubble at that rate.

I really liked that phrase of yours, so I even started to doubt if I should keep my bitcoins close to myself and not trade them for fiat buying back in the dips. But then again, if we already have the best, why not try to obtain more of it? Or is it along the lines that too much of a good thing is good for nothing, and Bitcoin is one such thing all in all?

We can, because the future is great for bitcoin and it could give us good profits, if we can afford to invest additional money for bitcoin then we must not be wasting time now, the opportunity does not come always, we are just lucky to have this opportunity to be in the early stage of bitcoin.

Well its a simple answer .with bitcoins in rise thr big ehales are buying a lot of bitcoins and they want to earn a lot in the future and as the supply of bitcoins is limited thats why.