According to monitoring data from the on-chain tracking agency Whale Alert on Wednesday (October 16), a Bitcoin whale address that had been dormant for 13.3 years was activated. The address holds 150 bitcoins, currently worth approximately US$10.16 million. These bitcoins were worth only US$2,541 in 2011.

Based on the Bitcoin price of $67,800 in the Asian market on Wednesday, the whale's book profit was 399,742.58%.

Bitcoin's ancient whales have recently awakened and "dumped" frequently, but they have not caused market panic like before, because new wallets have been very active in the past few weeks, accumulating a total of 1.97 million bitcoins. The accumulation speed is fast, indicating a change in behavior, and Bitcoin is relatively close to its historical high.

Ki Young Ju, founder and CEO of CryptoQuant, pointed out that the Bitcoin balance in wallets with a holding time of less than 155 days has surged by more than 813% so far this year, and the growth rate has accelerated in the past month. In a Twitter post, Ju pointed out that the new whale wallet has changed the holding structure of Bitcoin and may affect its future price trend.

The rise in new wallet holdings is not just due to transfers from old wallets for security purposes. In fact, it may represent the long-awaited influx of institutional money into Bitcoin. The new addresses also have different formats and signatures that can track their coins to new acquisitions.

The inflow of whales occurred during the sideways trading of Bitcoin, when the price was between $50,000 and $64,000. After accumulation, Bitcoin broke through $68,000 and occupied a 57.6% dominance.

Whales also managed to buy up all new Bitcoin output, and after the halving, only 450 new Bitcoins are available per day. Whale hoarding slowed down in the summer of 2024, and miners can only hold on for a while. Now, the apparent demand indicator is green again, making Bitcoin spot more scarce. According to Ju, the indicator is mostly bullish. However, Bitcoin whales have become more sophisticated, and some trade Bitcoin spot as a tool for short-term gains.

The biggest impact came from ETF buyers, who were on track to buy more than $1 billion worth of Bitcoin in the third week of October. According to wallet data tracked by Arkham Intelligence, ETF purchases have reached $920 million since the beginning of the week. These new whales have purchased another 8.4% of the total Bitcoin supply in 2024.

ETFs alone are not enough to explain this growth, as part of the accumulation may also come from institutions. In this case, whale wallets refer to all assets above 1,000 Bitcoins held in one address.

The newly held bitcoins have increased the number of bitcoins on the market, and the number of bitcoins in long-term storage has exceeded 16 billion, including 2 million bitcoins in miner reserves. The whales' hoarding of bitcoins is seen as an indicator of a market downturn and a preparation for a bull market.

At this time, Bitcoin was only one step away from its all-time high, and the whales began to increase their holdings. During this cycle, the whales continued to increase their holdings, and even relatively small declines did not occur, with a sharp drop of more than 70%.

According to the Rainbow Chart, Bitcoin is still in a buying and accumulation phase, and investor behavior reflects this. Spot whale buyers also helped shift Bitcoin sentiment into “greed” territory, according to the Crypto Fear and Greed Index.

Bitcoin has taken its usual time to rebuild leveraged positions, with open interest now back to late July levels at over $21 billion. Leveraged positions plummeted after August 5, posting one of the biggest declines this year.

In the short term, the accumulation of long and short positions may determine the price trend. Spot market whales can also influence market sentiment and snatch some tokens from retail investors.

Spot Bitcoin was also held for the long term, with on-chain transactions rising only slightly.