2021-01-08 Forbes - Data Reveals What’s Behind The Huge 2021 Bitcoin Price Boom

[acquafredda]

Bitcoin has had a phenomenal start to 2021, topping $40,000 per bitcoin for the first time ever.

The bitcoin price has added a staggering 400% over the last 12 months, climbing as institutional investors warm to the cryptocurrency and payments giants such as PayPal add their support.

Now, with retail investors increasingly eyeing bitcoin in light of its recent gains, new research shows how bitcoin "whales" accumulated a huge number of bitcoin tokens in December, helping the bitcoin price to never-before-seen highs.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2021/01/08/is-this-whats-really-behind-the-huge-2021-bitcoin-price-boom/

So, according to a Kraken report, not only did the aggregate number of bitcoin in whale addresses hit its highest level all year, 11.46 million bitcoin, but addresses with a balance of more than 100 bitcoin surpassed 16,300, a reading last seen on March 16, 2020.
Interesting.

[cr1776]

Bitcoin has had a phenomenal start to 2021, topping $40,000 per bitcoin for the first time ever.

The bitcoin price has added a staggering 400% over the last 12 months, climbing as institutional investors warm to the cryptocurrency and payments giants such as PayPal add their support.

Now, with retail investors increasingly eyeing bitcoin in light of its recent gains, new research shows how bitcoin "whales" accumulated a huge number of bitcoin tokens in December, helping the bitcoin price to never-before-seen highs.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2021/01/08/is-this-whats-really-behind-the-huge-2021-bitcoin-price-boom/

So, according to a Kraken report, not only did the aggregate number of bitcoin in whale addresses hit its highest level all year, 11.46 million bitcoin, but addresses with a balance of more than 100 bitcoin surpassed 16,300, a reading last seen on March 16, 2020.
Interesting.

It is funny to see that now a "whale" is:
"Bitcoin 'whales,' addresses with more than 100 bitcoin."

Over the long term bitcoin will do more for the pseudo-science of economics than has been done for economics ever.  The ability to track transactions, supply and demand, will provide ample ground for analysis.  Of course hopefully taproot and other improvements will provide additional privacy protections.

[odolvlobo]

I wish the people that write these articles would state up front that an address is not a person. A single address can hold bitcoins for many people and a person's bitcoins can (and usually are) spread among many addresses.

Of course, they never write that because these kinds of articles are really just clickbait.

It is funny to see that now a "whale" is:
"Bitcoin 'whales,' addresses with more than 100 bitcoin."

A whale used to be someone that could move the market. Now, it is someone that you envy.

[acquafredda]

I could not agree more. I heard too often the common misconception regarding users/addresses: never forget which is the target of these articles. I would be curious to know how many readers can distinguish between a wallet, a seed a private key, RBF, segwit, bech32... you know it all.

[bryant.coleman]

This can be misleading. While some of these addresses may belong to individual investors (who may own one or more such wallets), I strongly suspect that the vast majority are being controlled by institutions and exchanges. The data may actually point to the fact that huge number of coins are being moved to exchange wallets, as the old users are looking for opportunities to book profit.

[buwaytress]

Whales slowly increasing over time isn't really interesting anymore. It was in 2019 maybe that I remember reading that it was the mid-range that was increasing quicker than other rangers over time, that's more interesting to me. A growing "Bitcoin middle class" would be what I'd say is a more impressive marker... say around the 1 BTC range -- aware that $40k actually is upper class in majority of the world.

A whale used to be someone that could move the market. Now, it is someone that you envy.

Just one more thing unique to Bitcoin in the class of "crypto assets".

[cr1776]

...

A whale used to be someone that could move the market. Now, it is someone that you envy.

Exactly, lol. 

The higher the fiat price so the larger the "market cap" the less likely that someone dumping X coins will move the market.