According to Whale Alert (@whale_alert), a Twitter account dedicated to “live tracking of large crypto transactions from and to exchanges” for some of the top coins in the market, 15,000 Bitcoins with a value of almost $88 million were transferred between two different unknown wallets. Large amounts of crypto movements usually have some effect or the other on the market especially when they happen frequently.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 15,000 #BTC (87,750,080 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) May 8, 2019
Viewing the address on the blockchain shows that since inception, this particular sender whale has received more than 92,000 Bitcoins worth almost $541 million and still has a balance of more than 11,990 BTC worth well over $70 million.
Effects of Whales on the Cryptocurrency Market
A whale is a colloquial name used to describe an investor who has a very large amount of crypto funds and partakes in very large transactions. When compared with other financial sectors, the cryptocurrency market is relatively small and state of the market and value of assets could easily be impacted by the actions of whales.
Last year, the market plunged into a terrible bear market with most coins, especially Bitcoin, struggling to keep up. However, in early April, Bitcoin surprisingly surged and broke through the $5,000 mark for the first time in months. Some analysts, at the time, have attributed the jump to the action of some whales, who made very significant transactions around the time the surge was experienced.
Bitcoin, for example, more than one million of all the almost 17 Million Bitcoins mined to date, are held by about 32 of the asset’s biggest whales. This means that 32 accounts jointly hold almost 6% of all Bitcoin produced.
This fully supports the theory that some of these whales could directly impact the market. One of the biggest whales is said to be holding over 80,000 Bitcoins. Selling all or a large portion of that will definitely disturb the waters quite significantly.
