Reading 3 min Views 1 Published Updated
On-chain data from Glassnode shows that the largest bitcoin whales are exhibiting the opposite behavior of other investors.
The Bitcoin market is currently in a moderate distribution phase.
According to data from network analytics firm Glassnode, the behavior of BTC’s biggest whales is once again different from that of the rest of the market. The relevant indicator here is the Trend Accumulation Score, which tells us whether Bitcoin investors are buying or selling.
There are basically two factors that are considered in the metric to determine this score: the balance changes that occur in holders’ wallets and the size of the investors making those changes. This means that the larger an investor buys or sells, the greater their weight in the trend accumulation ranking.
When the value of this metric is close to 1, it means that large holders in the sector are accumulating right now (or a huge number of small investors demonstrate such behavior). On the other hand, the value of the indicator is close to zero, which indicates that investors are currently showing a distribution trend.
This indicator is usually defined for the entire market, but can also be used for individual segments of investors. In the chart below, Glassnode has displayed data to estimate the accumulation of the Bitcoin trend for different groups of holders in the market.
The value of the metric seems red for most of the market right now | Source: Glassnode on Twitter.
Here investors in the market have been divided into six different groups based on the amount of BTC they carry in their wallets: under 1 BTC, 1 to 10 BTC, 10 to 100 BTC, 100 to 1000 BTC, 1000 to 10,000 .BTC and above 10,000 BTC.
From the chart above, you can see that the trend accumulation indicator for all of these groups was around 1 at the bear market lows after the November 2022 FTX crash, suggesting that the market as a whole was then involved in some heavy buying.
This accumulation continued until a rally occurred in January 2023, when market behavior began to change. Holders began to distribute during this period, selling especially heavily between February and March. After this sharp distribution, the rally lost momentum and the price dropped below $20,000.
However, these investors started piling up again as the price rebounded sharply and the rally resumed. Although this time the accumulation was moderate.
Interestingly, while market behavior was more or less uniform in the months leading up to this new accumulation band (meaning that all groups were buying or selling at the same time), this new accumulation band did not have the largest participating whale (a group of over 10 000 BTC). Instead, these huge investors went through a distribution phase.
Ever since Bitcoin broke the $30,000 level in mid-April 2023, investors have started selling again, showing moderate distribution behavior.
As with the accumulation phase leading up to this sale, the aforementioned 10,000 BTC whales did not join the rest of the market; rather, they aggressively accumulated and expanded their wallets. These holders appear to have decided to move in the opposite direction of the general market.
Bitcoin Price
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $28,900, up 1% over the past week.
BTC falls below $29,000 again | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView
