The number of active Bitcoin wallets some of which have been dormant recently saw a sudden rise. More importantly, it can lead to major market movements , a bloomberg report notes.
Bloomberg draws it’s findings from Flipside, a crypto analytics startup. The startup previously won the backing of famous crypto exchange, Coinbase. Additionally, it also garnered support from venture capital firm Digital Currency Group in November.
Flipside notes that a large number of inactive Bitcoin holders have begun transferring their coins. These include holders who haven’t transferred their crypto assets for six to thirty months. Interestingly, they account for holding 60% of the coin’s circulating supply.
Collectively, the supply of active Bitcoins has reportedly surged 40 percent since summer 2018. Eric Stone, head of data science at Flipside, commented:
“It’s definitely a big shift. There’s more potential than usual for price swings.”
The report also notes similar wallet transactions which preceded Bitcoin’s major historical price volatility in both 2015 and 2017. In 2017, Bitcoin surged to all-time price highs of $20,000.
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From the Flipside CEO’s Desk
Flipside CEO David Balter highlighted the fact that long-time holders in particular, many of whom remained idle during the volatile markets of the past couple of years, are now back on the active radar.
Stone also added that the trend would continue, saying:
“We have no reason to expect them to remain stagnant for another 2-plus years.”
Bloomberg report notes that this ownership of Bitcoin, with only 1,000 wallet address purportedly holding 85 percent of all Bitcoins, is shifting the power play to Bitcoin whales. If they continue to plot it can leave a drastic impact on the market.
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Last October blockchain research firm Chainalysis published its study into the 32 largest Bitcoin wallets. The aforementioned wallets allegedly represent 1 million BTC. It is close to $3.7 billion, at press time.
Their data indicated at the time that only around a third of so-called whales were active traders. Also these had net traded against the herd and purchased heavily on price declines. The report ended exonerating whales of their market manipulation blame.