Crypto whales have been accumulating $BTC bitcoin using confidential transactions for over two years, said CEO and co-founder of CryptoQuant Ki Young Ju.

He made this conclusion based on data from CoinJoin, a service that makes bitcoin transactions anonymous. According to them, the number of large transfers through the platform has tripled in two years. And only a small percentage of them are associated with illegal money laundering.

Blockchain analytics company Chainalysis reported that losses associated with hacks exceeded $2.2 billion in 2024. Despite such a significant amount, this is less than 0.5% of the $377 million invested in bitcoin over the past 12 months. It turns out that the increase in anonymous transactions through CoinJoin cannot be explained by criminal activity.

In 2024, 1.55 million BTC were deposited into accumulation addresses, many of which are linked to exchange-traded funds (ETFs), MicroStrategy, and custodial wallets.

Ki said that while these are large transactions, they have become commonplace.