There is no doubt that 2018 bear market has been rough, but some cryptocurrency traders have been taking advantage which is the most recent crypto update. Actively trading whales have accumulated more Ethereum this year than at any other time in its history.
Over the past 12 hours, Bitcoin has recovered from $3700 to $4000 on major fiat-to-crypto exchanges. While a proper trend reversal could occur in the short term given the relatively low volume of BTC at $5.3 billion and generally negative sentiment in the market and a major upward movement to the $5000 and remains highly unlikely.
Ethereum
Blockchain research unity Diar analyzed more than 5200 ETH addresses to discover cryptocurrency whales who trade regularly are sitting on 80 percent more ETH than the start of the year.
Last week, fuelled by the corrective rally of BTC, major cryptocurrencies in the likes of Ripple (XRP) and ETH recorded gains in the range of six to nine percent with ETH rebounding to $115. The cryptocurrency market has added $11 billion to its valuation and tokens such as VET or ZIL have recorded gains of around 15 to 20 percent.
These whales now over 20 million ETH, roughly 20 percent of ETH circulating supply. This represents a four-fold increase in ETH held by top cryptocurrencies since January 2017, when they owned just 5 million ETH.
Token market collapse!
Diar analysts attribute the collapse of cryptocurrency token markets as the primary driving force behind the sudden hoarding of ETH. As the overwhelming majority of the tokens are paired with ETH, it makes sense that exiting these markets leads to holding onto ETH instead. ETH addresses belonging to cryptocurrency exchanges saw a huge increase in activity from ETH traders in November, particularly in the last two weeks. In total, last month saw traders withdraw approximately $470000 worth ETH from top exchanges, while overall deposits exceeded 16 million ETH. But new money from fresh-faced blockchain investors isn’t really responsible for the increased values. Diar pointed out there are now 30 percent fewer ETH whales than in January. This means the more concentrated group of cryptocurrency investors in holding more ETH than previous years.
While ETH balances of whales have certainly increased, the total value of those ETH accounts has dwindled. At the start of the year, these whales controlled roughly 11 million ETH, worth $21 billion at the time. Even though they own 80% more ETH, the total sum of whale holdings now reaches just $2.4 billion and 89 percent drop in overall value.