Bitcoin: Whale boom after FTX crash

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FTX’s failure appears to have sparked a full-scale whale race to take over Bitcoin and Ethereum.

This is shown by CoinGecko’s recent study “How many crypto whales have BTC or ETH On-Chain?” which features a decidedly revealing graphic.

The Bitcoin Whale Chart After FTX Collapse Number of Bitcoin and Ethereum Whale Addresses

Two curves are represented on this graph

Orange represents the evolution over time of the number of existing addresses on the Bitcoin blockchain with more than 10 BTC.

To be fair, 10 BTC is too few to qualify as whale addresses, but it does give an idea of ​​how the biggest bitcoin holders are performing to the exclusion of smaller retail investors.

The purple curve, on the other hand, represents the evolution over time of the number of addresses existing on the Ethereum blockchain with more than 10 ETH.

We immediately notice that from February of this year, these two curves began to increase. This dynamic shows that whales likely started accumulating as early as March, when the price of BTC was just below $40,000.

Indeed, between May and June, this growth had stagnated, probably linked to fears over the implosion of the Terra/Luna ecosystem and the failure of Celsius, Voyager and 3AC.

However, by July growth had resumed, culminating in a momentary annual peak between September and October.

While between late October and early November, a reversal occurred with whales dropping BTC and ETH while the price of Bitcoin was around $20,000.

But then came the turnaround.

The failure of FTX and the accumulation of Bitcoin

Just as the price crash of FTT, i.e. the FTX token, began to crash, these two curves really started to spike.

As soon as the price of Bitcoin fell well below $20,000, the number of whale addresses began to increase rapidly and significantly, until the end of November.

As for the Bitcoin curve, at the end of October the number of public addresses with at least 10 BTC was slightly lower at 151,000, while at the end of November it had skyrocketed to almost 153,000.

From February’s annual low of 146,000 to the end of October, there had been a 3.4% increase in eight months, while in November alone the increase was 1.3%.

In percentage terms, the increases on ETH’s purple curve are even larger, with a 5.8% increase from February to March and a 5.5% increase in November. However, a first peak had already occurred at the beginning of September, so that growth from then on was only 2%.

The cumulative increases of this parameter during 2022 turn out to be 3.8% for Bitcoin and 11.5% for Ethereum, with the current values ​​also being the yearly highs.

Specifically for Bitcoin, that high now stands at 152,936 addresses with more than 10 BTC as of December 4, with 5,541 additional addresses since the start of the year.

The causes

According to CoinGecko, there could be several causes behind this dynamic.

The first one they cite concerns the whales who, after the collapse of the centralized exchange FTX, began withdrawing their funds from the centralized exchanges and moving them to self-custody wallets. This would explain the rapidity with which this phenomenon occurred in November.

But CoinGecko also cites a second possible cause, namely whale purchases of BTC and ETH to boost Bitcoin and Ethereum wallets, taking advantage of lower prices.

Indeed, if the first of these causes clearly justifies the November boom, it does not however justify the previous growth. In fact, especially when it comes to Bitcoin, nothing like that happened when Celsius and Voyager failed.

Thus, the whole phenomenon is probably mainly due to the second cause, on an annual basis, although in November the first may have played a more important role.

The moment

CoinGecko traces the start of FTX’s collapse to November 6, the day Binance’s CEO posted the tweet announcing that he would be selling all of his FTT tokens. At that time, the number of Bitcoin whale addresses was 150,792.

When FTX stopped withdrawals two days later, they had already increased by 420, likely due to BTC withdrawals from exchanges.

By November 10, that number had dropped slightly to 150,988, likely due to the Bitcoin price crash, but by November 23, it had risen to 152,583.

So, the strongest growth took place after Bitcoin’s price hit yearly lows on Nov. 10, not during the FTX crash. It is also worth mentioning that at that time, many feared that other centralized exchanges would also fail.

CoinGecko points out that the number of Bitcoin whale addresses in November grew at least 4x faster than the annual average. In fact, after the collapse of FTX, it grew at an average daily rate of +64 addresses per day from November 8 to December 4, while in total over the year 2022 the average was +15 addresses per day. day.

For ETH, it went from +14 to +75 addresses per day.

Moreover, it remains clear that those who take their tokens from exchanges to store them on a self-storage wallet are most likely doing so to store them in the medium or long term, i.e. without having the objective of storing them. resell soon.

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