Bitcoin Forum

Someone posted a topic about an article claiming that the "Bitcoin Whales" have been accumulating (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5265205.0) and increasing their BTC stash post the "Black Thrusday" event. I replied that kind of metric is simply a false comparison. It is comparing a bunch of greedy motherfuckers against the over 90% of people who actually believe that BTC is worth something and hold less than 1 BTC. There is no reliable way of knowing who exactly these whales are but I am pretty sure they are not "wise investors", as one reply in that topic puts it. These are people who chanced upon bitcoin as developers, cryptography enthusiasts, silk road traders or even plain-ass scammers. These people have actually made their wealth from the 1000s of BTC they held while bitcoin went through ATH and present levels.

Some people think that some of these whales must be newcomers interested in technology. There is plenty of evidence that this is not the case. A newcomer whale interested in technology and buying 1000+ BTC post 2016-17 would have been a seminal event and we would have heard about the individual or institution all over the news. Any such recent whale investing on basis of "technology" would put their weight behind the technology and would have put all their effort to make it grow.

How many times have you heard news about VCs, Startup Incubators or other such funding parties come out in the open and declare that "This is the technology of the future and I am investing a Million dollars in it"??Have you?? Give me one example and maybe we would have your "technology" whale. If we had even a few of such individuals, you would be seeing a far more concerted effort towards mainstreaming the technology. You wouldn't have so much misinformation on media because a group of such people would be working towards ensuring that the regulators don't get to take a one-sided view. Nothing of this sort happens. People like you and me talk it out on this forum, one of the last bastions i guess.

Most of those other bastards are doing exactly what the wealthy elites have always been doing. Milking the rest of the people for fiat money while bitcoin is kept propped up by the belief of the >90% that hold less than 1 BTC. That is the sad truth. Right now, this is just another "Rich getting richer" scheme. Maybe I am just ignorant of these technology enthusiasts and am wrong to point out that the whales are little more than the wealthy factory owners in this very communist ecosystem.

What are your thoughts on this?

Do you think there are people out there with the dough and the willingness to make a difference?

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This is basically my rage post against those elusive "Whales". My earlier thoughts weren't like this. I used to think there was a case for Bitcoin champions. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2957024.0)

I'm not entirely sure what point you are arguing for honestly. But from what I gather, many people that invest into Bitcoin even on reasonably large scales will probably do so privately. I agree with you that whether or not its more "whales" or the general population doing the buying I think is hard for anyone to discern unless they were at the helm of a major exchange and could see what was happening on the backend. I'm guessing that article or others like it are a lot of conjecture / speculation. I think all that regular folk could figure out would be if large wallet addresses are getting larger but that will only provide so much information.

As far as the actual elites getting involved, I think it's still too novel of a technology and there's still no reason to really touch it. Most billionaires can't really invest into Bitcoin in any super meaningful way. Bitcoin has a market cap right now of around $200b. But if you do the divide by 20 principle, there's probably only about $10b of actual money in Bitcoin presently. Investing much more than an 8-figure ish amount at those numbers becomes incredibly impractical. That just simply isn't enough. Aside from that impossible logistical hurdle, there's all the legal uncertainty, novelty in technology and other issues and BTC getting taken mainstream is incredibly difficult to do.

In my opinion, it will happen with time, but it will be far from over night. And a simple article will always generalize a bit too far.

I'm not going to lie. For every Phat stacked bank account out there spouting about this investment or that. There are 1000 others doing their thing behind the scenes. Not everyone out there is looking for fame, most settle for cash.

Much like my opinions on most financial matters I'd love to see some form of leveling event happen that would encourage wider mass adoption and less concentrated accumulation. The problem is that any such event is likely to play out in a similar fashion. If the price did a rebound down to 5k, who is going to buy it up... probably not the masses as it will be seen as a sinking ship. The same people accumulating now though will grab it up with the cash they've already made from BTC and whatever other early investor coins they've profited from.

There are some out there who are using their positions to educate assist and create a market for crypto in general. Hell even some of them earn the hatred from the masses, because we don't agree with their vision. It is what it is unfortunately. It's not like it's been a hidden fact that there has been massive price manipulation in the past. Hell a 1000+ BTC movement from a wallet to an exchange drives people bonkers. Then brings in the calls for regulations to make sure these whales don't manipulate anymore... is that what the majority of users want now?? Not in general.

I'm not surprised when I hear that "Whales" want to get more BTC. This can make up a large group of people or entities look at Grayscale and what they've been up to.

https://news.bitcoin.com/grayscale-buys-33-of-all-bitcoin-mined-in-last-three-months/


Vent away good sir... much like the rest of the world issues you learn to live with it and try your best to not b part of the problem.

why would you?!
exchanges don't publicly announce who has bought how much bitcoin from them, that would be illegal. and there is a lot of different ways to buy bitcoin than going to one place and buying it in one chunk!
besides in 2016 the price was mostly around $500 and as low as $300 and 1000BTC would have been $300k to $500k which is not that big when accumulated over time.

and why do you choose 2016? i prefer using 2015 which was the bottom (similar to 2019) and price was as low as $150 while residing in $200 range for a long time. 1000BTC would have been as low as $150k. and that is without trading profit.

that makes no sense!
you have to be either a developer to have any "weight" or start a centralized company which goes against bitcoin to have any "weight".

besides one thing that is important for many bitcoin users is privacy. and bitcoin technology created in 2008 is already good and doesn't need growing.

it would have been true if they were forcing people to hand over their money!
when newbies panic sell or refuse to buy when price is low it is not the system's fault or the whales evil plan!

for example i remember back in 2014 when i started most newbies were adamant that price will never go up and weren't buying at prices between $150 and $500 and look where we are now. you can even find their topics talking about falling down to $20.
nobody forced them at gunpoint to not buy bitcoin or blind them to see bitcoin's potential or the "technology". it was their own damn choice.

this will happen all over again in about 3 or 4 years when people complain about "whales" having lots of bitcoin while it costs them something like a million bucks to buy 10 bitcoins! :D

I think there is nothing wrong with whales.
Yes, they are early adopter for sure, who accumulated thousands of bitcoin in the early days to make them filthy rich.
Today’s whales are the smartest ones: they didn’t lose their private key, they didn’t sell all their bitcoin when it reached 1$, they survived the multiple 90% price drops: saying “if I knew bitcoin in 2009, I would be rich now” largely underestimate the difficulty of holding in those times.

Today they are rich, so what? The least they could do is trying to get even more rich. Bitcoin is an unregulated market, so they can do what they are doing. It’s a Far West here, every scammer is free to act because the sheriff hasn’t arrived in the city yet. You must know that everything and everyone want to separate you from your bitcoin, act consequently. Just remember that after the Far West, San Francisco was built.

On a final notes just remember there is a second category of whale, who are big player in the ecosystem: mining pools, exchanges or OTC desk are used to move large amounts of bitcoins, which are tracked as “whales” by the blunt heuristic based  “chain analysis firms”. Usually those actors have a mild attitude toward pricing moves.

So you're basically raging because of the ability of the whales to take advantage of the times when Bitcoin was still around less than $1000? Chanced upon Bitcoin may be true, but them investing upon it is enough to call them wise, simply because they invested in an asset they believed to be worth the money, and which turned out to be true. There's no use in arguing that they just "chanced" upon Bitcoin hence they're advantage of investing, that if you were in their shoes back then you'd also invest since that's done, we're here right now where they hold major amounts of BTC. And besides, who put the rule out that buying 1000 BTC should be announced to the entire world? Pretty stupid idea imo.

You're basically putting the blame on the wrong side. It's like you're cursing the whales for existing as what they are, as whales, when they themselves did something to move towards such stage.

This is just another "f#ck the rich!" type of forum post.
The crypto whales have the advantage of being already rich and they are using that advantage.
If I was a crypto whale,I would do exactly the same thing.The so called "rich shaming" or blaming a rich guy for being rich is just like blaming a beautiful woman for using her beauty to get a "sugar daddy". ;D
The world is a competitive jungle and everyone uses whatever advantages he or she has in order to succeed.
I agree that crypto whales aren't interested that much in the blockchain technology.And so what?Do you think the "average Joe" that has Bitcoins is interested in the Blockchain technology?

Whales are just people who happen to have a fair amount of money in their pockets and they want to take advantage of the Bitcoins so that in the near future that fair amount of money doubles or triples , the thing is they can invest in stock markets and other places too but unfortunately those investments takes time.

They try and lure in the investors by possible opening of the whale alerts and at the end they are the ones who encash out when the price climbs , this way they would have made a lot of money in no time.

But as you are talking about whales , some of the whales here are the early Bitcoin adopters , people like Satoshi Nakamoto who actually have a lot of Bitcoins with them and many more , not all whales are bad so we cannot just conceptualize this thing .

Around 50% BTC are with whales , if they would have had that greed inside them, we would have nothing right now .

Save the whales! :)

We need more of them to make Bitcoin more valuable ( but not until I have picked up a bit more Bitcoin ).

Yeah, I think personally that we should not be taking it out on the whales,,, people blame them a lot when they dump on prices but they also forget that whales are equally responsible for any big moves upwards, like now, when a whale buys up tons of BTC it of course pumps. Did anyone say that was a bad thing? Nope:)

IF they don't exists then how do you see Bitcoin getting that much market capitalisation. For instance consider them as "Reserve Bank of Bitcoins". If they start pulling off their investment from and out of bitcoin then you will see bitcoin going down to couple of bucks.

Whales are like backbone for the economy inhere. Yes, absolutely we are just cream layer of everything but don't forget that is our fault. We were did not enter into bitcoin at right time or had no courage of buying the bitcoin and holding them for years like those so called whales did.

It's outrageous idea to call them enemy here, since they are the one because of whom you are able to execute larger orders on the exchangers.  :D

maybe theymos might be amenble to introduce merit-negging for topic starters only. or maybe just for @aminimanish :D

The whale is a term used for people who possess lots of assets, or we can call them sultans, they exist and buying. Hating a sultan can prevent you from becoming a sultan. Bitcoin is money, and hating it keeps you away from it. It's the law of nature, cause, and effect. Long live the sultans!

I agree - leave the whales alone, and worry about the sharks.


and the pollution. :)

You do not need to know who are whales before you believe they exist and they are always responsible for massive influence on the price of a coin. If you have been following services that give signals of huge crypto transfers on the blockchain, you will know the bases for the current surge in price. For the past few days, Millions in dollars of stablecoins are being transferred and traded on large exchanges such as Binance, Huobi, etc. It is no longer news that such amount has the ability to influence the market price.

Right, even if those dips happen, i cannot accumulate as much as I want from an event like the Black Thursday. So its just a slow process of buying the dips, placing orders and cost-averaging. Whales on the other hand don't need confidence in the technology or keep up with the uncertainties. They have made their dough

Do you think people like Peter Todd, Andreas, Saifedean etc. are whales themselves? Who else would you count as the people using their position for creating a crypto market. Just want to know. I made this post with the intention of getting some re-assurance, and venting, of course.

Thanks. Not trying to be part of the problem.

Technology growth also depends on marketing and perception. For example, the people that hope that price of bitcoin will reach multi-million could have invested in crazy ideas like the Seastead. A post on the forum regarding it received little attention.

Most of those other bastards are doing exactly what the wealthy elites have always been doing. Milking the rest of the people for fiat money while bitcoin is kept propped up by the belief of the >90% that hold less than 1 BTC. That is the sad truth. Right now, this is just another "Rich getting richer" scheme. Maybe I am just ignorant of these technology enthusiasts and am wrong to point out that the whales are little more than the wealthy factory owners in this very communist ecosystem.

Lets hope that trend continues. I just feel, it won't see the 150 to 10,000 growth without some active backing from the people that already have it. Maybe in the form of financing bitcoin adoption, backing it up when media calls a hack "Bitcoin Scam".

To those saying that i am blaming whales for being rich. Totally my fault if i sound that way. I am blaming them because I believe they should be more visible and do more to back bitcoin adoption rather than leave it orphaned as a "take it or leave it" deal.

I sent you 3 PM's a few months back. We had a debate on the Climate change thing. I would have preferred to get along. If your problem with me doesn't stem from a 4chan style deeper bias, let me know. Otherwise, lets steer clear of each other, Shall we?

I don’t see why you have to hate on whales. They are either super lucky to have their private keys intact even after all these years, or deep pockets trying to fit in and make their way into even more riches. Not to glorify them or anything but they are one of the primary movers of the market when it comes to a slump, and if you don’t see something good out of it but celebrate when your bitcoins are worth more then I think there’s a problem. Anyway, I don’t necessarily like what they do but at least, they help stimulate the market—and help dump their coins as well, so yeah.

you mean @Actor_Tom_Truong_ the user who does not like intelligence agencies?  ;D


 ???

Of course, these whales are buying from small fish, where is wrong with that?


What if they didn't buy like hell the price would go up? do you want everyone to make hodl? this is impossible


if they are getting richer every day and with more bitcoins Is because they are wise

They are called whale for some reasons and one of the reasons is they know how to make money from there a huge amount of BTCs. it's basically they have their own knowledge on how to do those things. As a normal hodler, I can't understand the kind of strategies they have. it just feels like whatever they're doing with their BTCs is affecting the current situation of the crypto market. either the price will rise or fall, they have some contribution on that event. We cannot hate them for that, they've been doing a good job since the beginning by making the price of the BTC at the top until now.

We have many problems already globally. Just not make another problem again against these whales.

Yes there are some who are angry with them but what can they do against them?? The only thing they can do is just to rant here in the forum or in social media so what is the purpose of raging against these whales? I don't think we need to hate them but just let them do what they want to do with the crypto market because in the end, there is nothing we can do about it. Just ride the wave they are doing and wait for the perfect opportunity to buy because for sure, there will be a time that they will sell their Bitcoins causing the price to drop and vice versa.

"The whales" is mostly just a conspiracy theory. People know that some individuals hold a lot of coins, so they now blame every price movement that goes against their expectations of whales. Price falls? Whales are dumping. Price rises? Whales are pumping. Price goes sideways? Whales are manipulating.

You say that whales are elusive, but what it actually means is that no one has any good proof of who these whales are and when they are actually manipulating the market. We know a few concrete examples, like the bearwhale, which by the way nicely demonstrates that whales aren't as powerful as people believe.

I think speculating about whales without bringing no evidence of their activity is just a waste of time. Just like saying "Bitcoin will reach X" without any backing to your statement. This is just a pure guess.

and worry about FOMO buyers...yeah i know those suckers help pump the price, but more often than they're nothing but a buch of wimps and panic sellers ready to sell when the red numbers pop up. Whales are chill and friendly af (:

I don't hate them. I just wish they did more or atleast normies like me knew that they were doing more.


You are right. We don't have to hate on them. Everybody should love whales. I want to find the reasons to love them apart from just knowing that they bought cheap and are mega-rich and are still holding and not retiring to some island with all their wealth. Thats why I had this caveat in the original post.


Also, what up with people getting so defensive for the whales. They are the smart people who have been made rich by adoption post-2016. By people willing to buy and sell at higher and higher prices because they see value in adopting bitcoin as a part of their lives or as a part of their investments. What is the issue if someone expects them to be a bit more pro-active in backing crypto? Okay, I used a few swear words in the post. I am nobody to question their role. Maybe they are pulling the levers from the background. Would it be so bad to know that they are doing that?? Or asking about it??

This was posted while I was writing the reply above. And its a different viewpoint that they don't make a difference. Do you think that speculating about their role, and i suppose, by extension, expecting them to show any form of pro-active zeal, is a waste of time? Should I just accept that their only but extremely important role is not to dump those stashes on the market?

Why worry about whales dumping their stash if you can't even tell for sure if whales are moving the market or not? Most of the "whale" addresses belong to exchanges and other organizations, the consolidate coins and move them to cold storage, but the popular twitter account Whale alert reports every such movement, which causes panic among the newbies.

What I'm saying is that without any factual evidence, speculation about whales is worthless. It shouldn't impact your trading decisions.