Bitcoin (BTC) Whales Have Accumulated 80,000 BTC, Indicating Confidence in a Future Price Uptrend

Key takeaways:

Larger Bitcoin holders grew their BTC positions by 0.61% over the past six weeks, while smaller retail investors sold around 290 BTC, either panicking or selling out of boredom.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs have seen $4.41 billion in inflows since March 26.

As Bitcoin price continues to hover in the mid-$90,000s with no signs of any breakout, data from crypto analytics platform Santiment shows that smaller retail investors have been shedding BTC.

However, larger Bitcoin holders, or so-called "whales," are still accumulating the asset. The contrasting behavior between the BTC whales and retail investors could signal that Bitcoin may be heading toward another upward trend.

"When large wallets gradually accumulate in tandem with retail panic selling/selling out of boredom, it is generally a strong long-term sign of prices biding their time before another breakout," Santiment said in a May 6 X post.

Smaller players show cold feet

According to the post, Bitcoin wallet holders with between 10 and 10,000 BTC increased their collective BTC holdings by 81,338. This represents a 0.61% rise in their total positions since March 26.

"This signals a potential retest of the $100K psychological price level in the near future. As May progresses, Bitcoin's key stakeholders are mostly moving in the right direction if you're rooting for $100K BTC in the near future."

However, those with less than 0.1 BTC sold off approximately 290 Bitcoin over the same period.

Since March 26, Bitcoin has traded between $76,273 and $97,210, according to CoinMarketCap data.

Bitcoin fell below $100,000 on Feb. 1 after US President Donald Trump announced his tariffs and has yet to reclaim that price level. At the time of publication, Bitcoin is trading at $96,360.

Meanwhile, spot Bitcoin ETF holders have also been accumulating over the same period, with US-based spot Bitcoin ETFs totaling $4.41 billion in inflows since March 26, according to Farside data.

Bitcoin dominance continues to soar

The overall crypto market is still concentrated around Bitcoin. Bitcoin dominance reached 65% on May 6, the highest reading since January 2021, according to TradingView data.

At the time of publication, the metric is 65.19%.

The crypto market capitalization is now around $2.48 trillion, while the DeFi market capitalization is about $183 billion.

At the same time, the total crypto market volume for the 24-hour period is $119.9 billion, and the total DeFi market volume is approximately $12.8 billion.

According to DeFi Llama data, the top five DeFi protocols by total value locked (TVL) are Aave (CRYPTO: AAVE), Curve (CRYPTO: CRV), Maker (CRYPTO: MKR), Balancer (CRYPTO: BAL) and Liqiqui.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.