Why the big whales are not cashing out?

[pitham1]

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

That is wishful thinking. 
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.

[sportis]

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/

[LovelyPrey]

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

[tee-rex]

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?

[pacifista]

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

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.

[Wowcoin]

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.

[tee-rex]

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

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.

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.

[zoose]

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.

[buwaytress]

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=)

[Betwrong]

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?

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.

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.

[tee-rex]

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?

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.

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?

[xdrpx]

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.

[tee-rex]

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.

[susila_bai]

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?

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.

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?

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.

[bitjoin]

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.

[Shenzou]

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.

[ethereumhunter]

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

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.

[aardvark15]

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.

[Kotone]

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

[salmanahmedone]

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

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.