Bitcoin Forum

Wondering where do big players/hedge funds buy/sell big sums of btc, and where they exchange it to fiat?

I would still have to say that local bitcoins is probably the way they do it, however I may be wrong. There are plenty of large buyers and sellers that can be found there.

Otherwise, large exchange sites such are also good for large scale selling bitcoin to fiat.

I doubt many whales are using local bitcoins. You pay a massive premium when compared to large exchanges. When it comes to 100s of coins, that adds up quickly. From what I can tell the premium is anywhere from 2% to 30% depending on the seller on local bitcoins. 

That is right, there is more people that trade in large bitcoin exchanges like Kraken and Bitstamp and move their money pretty easily so that they could invest in something. It’s quite surprising to see how many money is being traded through those type of places compared to places like Local Bitcoin. Local Bitcoin has a bunch of scammers and the people that trade in those places don’t really hold that much Bitcoin on them unless there is a supplier that is working for a specific cause and that person will only do transactions in person. It’s too dangerous to do Local Bitcoins with large sums of money.

On exchanges just like everyone else.

P2P trading is possible but then i don't think that it is very convenient for them as it is hard for them to get someone to supply them with the amount of cash/bitcoin that they need on a regular basis. Plus, p2p usually has worse rates.

There is an option with bitfinex where you can trade directly with another whale, without disturbing the markets. That could be viable too, though i haven't heard of any whales use it actively.

whales sell BTC in the sea  :D LOL , i think all whales sell they btc in local exchange accept with they local fiat
like in indonesian whales sale bitcoin in vip.bitcoin.co.id or luno.com

I'm interested to know why you think whales trade on different platforms than average bitcoiners?

It is really up to them to decide which platforms they want to buy/sell on. Usually, whales trade on regulated exchanges because there is a lot more liquidity in the orderbooks there and they feel more comfortable there as the spread is lower as well.

However, i've seen localbitcoins whales as well, that have trade offers to the size of $100k or even $200k+ as a maximum. But most of the action do occur on exchanges.

Whales sell OTC, they have brokers or services that buy and sell large amounts.  This is all mostly happening off exchanges.  An estimate 60-80% of trades are done like this.

maybe they have their own local exchange.

Oh realy? OMG i was totaly thinking that big buyers and big whales are buying in sime big exchange like poloniex and kraken or bittrex you can see a huge amount of vulume in this 3 giants exchange

I believe they are on exchanges that has high volume or maybe on low volume as well but they are accumulating little by little so that it will not look like a pump and dump. When they accumulate enough, they would spread some news that can affect the price and would make the traders do panic buying or selling and then they would take advantage of it. Maybe they would change it to fiat depending on the available platform available in their country but only little by little so as not to catch attention of authorities.

yes I agree with you their existence is certainly on some large platform that has high volume, and maybe now they are collecting it, until one day they will make a big price spike

I think in big and local exchanges
in the big exchanges: i see a big wall trying to influence market conditions, and I think it's their favorite place because of trading volume

in the local exchanges: in my local exchanges, sometimes bitcoin prices are more expensive when compared with other exchanges

It's exactly this. They're not going to pay 0.1% ~ 0.2% commission on a very large order to an exchange when they can deal person to person or pay a fixed fee to a dealer.
The whales you see on the exchanges are day trading not accumulating a BTC holding.

OTC, auctions, etc

It depends. They can have it spread among multiple exchanges, they can have it all in one exchange, typically it is somewhere they can have a sizable influence on the exchange, really. They might even make deals with exchanges so they have more favorable positions or fees included with their account, there's a lot that they can be doing. It all depends on the availability of the exchange for the whale. Or how much they want to influence a market. There's no real one-size-fits-all answer for something like this.

I think it has to be exchanges, especially when the intention is to manipulate the value of a coin or change the market or influence it. But for their actual trade, it could be private or some may use localbitcoins.

This is basically the thing... they need to operate on large exchanges because there isn't enough volume on small ones.

Actually it is the network of the long term between person to person to use bitcoin and also another cryptocurrency .
Here i myself have network of those friends who are using bitcoin and Etherium coin for buy and sell at the offline market .
At offline the rates of these coins are small low , so better to have the coins in offline market , but in small amounts .
But I don't think that you should think about these things because these are not a better way of dealing with cryptocurrency because if we are making earnings then we needed to make buy sell in online and also we should pay all the tax to the government because to pay tax is a better way of doing this job in virtual currency because after pay of the tax we don't need to take tension for the future that we will needed to face any problem by the government officers about the work that we are doing.
But still if you want make connection between those who want make offline deals then you can found them at local bitcoind and at social media but you will needed to meet them at offline and also to have trust because all these in this field depends upon trust .