Author: Martin Young, CoinTelegraph; Translated by: Deng Tong, Golden Finance
On-chain data shows that during the cryptocurrency market crash on August 5-6, Bitcoin whale trading volume hit its highest level since April.
On August 8, on-chain analytics platform Santiment revealed in an article from X that wallets with total holdings between 10 and 1,000 “accumulated rapidly during the price drop, causing the top asset in crypto to fall below $50,000.”
According to Santiment, as crypto prices fell, there were 28,319 Bitcoin transactions worth more than $100,000 and 5,738 transactions worth more than $1 million on those two dates.
On August 5, Bitcoin fell by about 18%, dropping from just over $60,000 to below $50,000 in less than a day. However, after buying on the dip, the price of Bitcoin has recovered slightly and returned to the $57,000 level.
Bitcoin whale transactions. Source: Santiment
On August 7, it was reported that Bitcoin whales (or permanent holder addresses) had siphoned off nearly $23 billion worth of assets over the past 30 days, with activity peaking during the market crash.
“It’s clearly accumulation,” said Ki Young Ju, founder and CEO of CryptoQuant, who reported that more than 400,000 BTC had been transferred to permanent holder addresses since the beginning of July.
He also said that whales who had held BTC for more than three years sold their holdings to new whales between March and June, but “there is no significant selling pressure from old whales at this time.”
On August 3, just days before the crash, whales were already moving Bitcoin off exchanges at the highest rate in nine years. Bitcoin whales with at least a thousand Bitcoins reportedly moved the most BTC off exchanges since 2015.
However, the same cannot be said for investors in U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs, which saw combined outflows of $554 million between August 2 and 6, according to data from Farside Investors.
“The absence of ETF buyers during this decline is concerning and raises concerns about the direction of the market,” market research firm 10x Research noted on August 8.
