On-chain data shows the new Bitcoin whales realized a massive amount of loss during the past week as BTC has gone through its drawdown.
New Bitcoin Whales Have Harvested Massive Losses Recently
As pointed out by CryptoQuant analyst Maartunn in a new post on X, New Whales on the Bitcoin blockchain have been participating in loss-taking recently. “Whales” are broadly defined as investors holding more than 1,000 BTC in their wallets, excluding entities such as miners and exchanges.
Whales can be divided into two cohorts on the basis of holding time: New Whales and Old Whales. The former, also known as Short-Term Holder (STH) Whales, include all whale-sized addresses that purchased their coins within the past 155 days. Similarly, the Old or Long-Term Holder (LTH) Whales are made up of the large investors who have held past the five-month cutoff.
Statistically, the longer an investor holds onto their coins, the less likely they are to sell them in the future. As such, the New Whales with their relatively short holding time are considered to represent the weak-minded side of the market, while the Old Whales represent the resolute side.
The behavior of these investors has been in line with their reputation during the recent price plunge, as the chart for the Bitcoin realized profit/loss shared by Maartunn shows.
The value of the metric appears to have been negative in recent days | Source: @JA_Maartun on X
From the graph, it’s apparent that the whales as a whole have realized a significant amount of losses in response to the bearish price action. The distribution of the realized loss, however, has heavily skewed toward the New Whales (shaded in blue in the chart).
In total, the STH Whales took $1.77 billion in losses during the past week. This is a notable amount and suggests that the big-money investors who entered the market recently have panic-capitulated in the crash. Meanwhile, the LTH Whales have kept their loss-taking contained, at least for now.
It only remains to be seen how the Bitcoin price will develop in the near future and how these whales will react to it. The price drawdown so far took the cryptocurrency to a low of $59,000, which isn’t at too much of a distance from the Realized Price, a metric tracking the cost basis of the average investor on the network.
As the analyst pointed out in another X post, BTC’s Realized Price is currently located at $53,630.
The trend in the Realized Price over the history of the asset | Source: @JA_Maartun on X
Bitcoin hasn’t gone below the Realized Price in this cycle even once, but it’s possible that if the current bearish trajectory continues, a retest could occur. “Every dip below that level has historically been a no-brainer DCA zone for long-term investors,” noted Maartunn.
BTC Price
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $63,300, down more than 13% over the past week.
Looks like the price of the coin has been moving sideways recently | Source: BTCUSDT on TradingView
