According to on-chain data, Bitcoin novice whales have recently leveled off their loss burden, a potential sign that their capitulation has reached a lull.
Bitcoin whale selling recently returned to neutral
In a new post on X, on-chain analytics firm CryptoQuant talked about how the behavior of Bitcoin whales has changed recently. A “whale” is a BTC investor who holds more than 1,000 crypto tokens in their wallet balance.
At current exchange rates, the cutoff for this cohort translates to $86.7 million, which is significant. Because these investors have large holdings, they can have some influence in the market.
Therefore, whale behavior is worth paying attention to. There are many ways to track whale behavior, one of which is to use the realized profit and loss indicator.
This metric, as its name suggests, measures the amount of net profit or loss realized through trading by the members of a group as a whole. A positive value indicates that profit taking is predominant, and a negative value indicates that realized losses exceed profits.
Whales can be divided into two subgroups called short-term holders (STH) or new whales and long-term holders (LTH) or old whales. The former group includes whale investors who purchased the coin within the past 155 days, while the latter group consists of whales who have held for longer than this period.
Here, a chart shared by CryptoQuant shows the trend of Bitcoin realized P&L for new whales and old whales over the past few months.
The value of the metric appears to have been neutral for both cohorts in recent days | Source: CryptoQuant on X
As shown in the chart above, since Bitcoin’s price took a bearish turn in October, Bitcoin’s realized gains and losses have mostly been within whale loss territory.
In particular, New Whales was responsible for the majority of the losses realized, and the loss burden soared to more than $600 million. “The real losses from the new whales had a significant impact on the price decline from $124,000 to $84,000,” the analyst firm noted.
The chart shows that the losses realized by these big Bitcoin investors have recently decreased as BTC’s bearish momentum subsides and the price enters a consolidation phase.
Over the past week, realized P&Ls have been minimized to neutral levels on both the new and old whales. This means that the largest hands in the market are only shifting coins closer to their cost base.
It remains to be seen whether this signals that the whale’s descent phase is over, but for now, these investors are indeed hitting the pause button.
BTC price
Bitcoin started this week with a rallying surge above $90,000, but the asset quickly went downhill, returning to $87,000.
Looks like the price of the coin has gone down recently | Source: BTCUSDT on TradingView
Dall-E, Featured Image from CryptoQuant.com, Chart from TradingView.com
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