Bitcoin whales are buying BTC through anonymous transactions

Crypto whales have been purchasing Bitcoin through confidential transactions for over two years, claims Ki Young-Joo, CEO and co-founder of CryptoQuant.

He reached this conclusion based on CoinJoin data, a service that anonymizes Bitcoin transactions. According to them, over the past two years, the number of large transfers through the platform has tripled. And only a small percentage of them is related to illegal money laundering.

The blockchain analytics company Chainalysis reported that in 2024, losses related to hacks will exceed $2.2 billion. Despite such a significant amount, this is less than 0.5% of the $377 million invested in Bitcoin over the last 12 months. It turns out that the increase in anonymous transactions through CoinJoin cannot be attributed to criminal activity.

In 2024, 1.55 million BTC went to saving addresses, many of which are associated with exchange-traded funds (ETFs), MicroStrategy, and custodial wallets.

Ki noted that although these are large transactions, they have already become commonplace.