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CoinDesk published research that purports to show that retail has evolved into smart money over time in the crypto-asset market. Investors who hold less than one BTC continue to accumulate, as they have been doing for the past two months. Humpback whales who hold over 10K BTC, continue to distribute coins, extending the two-month trend. Long-term holders, on average, seem unfazed about this rally and continue holding onto bitcoin, demanding higher prices. The data challenges the narrative that whales are the smart money of the ecosystem. The feature image shows that whales have been selling into price strength, while retail has been buying the rally.

On Monday, Whale Alert, a cryptocurrency transaction tracking bot, tweeted that a Bitcoin whale known as 'Unknown Owner 26' moved $468.5 million worth of Bitcoin (49,756) for just $374.98.

According to crypto market data aggregator, Glassnode, Bitcoin whales offloaded massive amounts of BTC during February. The whales (who hold between 1,000 and 10,000 BTC) and humpback (more than 10,000 BTC) buying spree peaked in January as they snapped up 80,000 BTC, but so far in February they appear to have taken heavy profits, offloading 140,000 BTC.

There's nothing widespread about Bitcoin ownership. A few large holders commonly referred to as whales continue to own most Bitcoin. About 2% of the anonymous ownership accounts that can be tracked on the cryptocurrency's blockchain control 95% of the digital asset, according to Flipside Crypto. A further breakdown shows that whales own 92.4% of the 2%, while crypto exchanges account for nearly 7%.

The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia (Philly Fed) published a paper on difference in how large holders of Ethereum (ETH) behave compared with smaller holders of ETH relative to price movements and the volatility of the cryptocurrency. It finds that large ETH holders tend to increase their ETH holdings prior to a price increase, while small ETH holders tend to reduce their ETH holdings prior to a price increase. In other words, ETH returns tend to move in the direction that benefits crypto "whales" while reducing returns (or increasing loss) to "minnows." Additionally, it finds that the volatility of ETH returns seems to be driven by small retail investors rather than by the crypto whales. While these price dynamics do not necessarily suggest that there is overt market manipulation occurring within the ETH market, understanding them is essential for regulators in designing policies and guidelines to discourage abusive behavior and for market participants to better manage risk in crypto markets.

Fueled by a spike in speculative appetite, crypto-asset entrepreneurs are offering new digital coins at a torrid pace reminiscent of the initial coin offering (ICO) boom three years ago. Among the freshly listed: Porkchop, Davecoin, Spaghetti, Newtonium and Whale. Many have no obvious utility, but investors have poured billions into them up in hopes of riding one to an easy profit. This time, buzz is growing over decentralized finance applications that seek to cut out institutions from things like lending. Now, central banks are plowing trillions into the system, depressing bond yields and sparking a rush into alternative assets. More than 500 coins have been listed in the past month.

Even though the bitcoin market has evolved significantly over the last two years, a majority of BTC is owned by a small number of individuals. They can exert pressure on the markets to form patterns and lure unsuspecting traders to take their bait.

"Tether Limited has the sole authority to create (mint) and destroy (burn) Tether stablecoins (USD₮). This paper investigates Bitcoin's response to USD₮ supply change events between 2014 and 2021 and identifies an interesting asymmetry between Bitcoin's responses to USD₮ minting and burning events. Bitcoin responds positively to USD₮ minting events over 5- to 30-minute event windows, but this response begins declining after 60 minutes. State-dependence is also demonstrated, with Bitcoin prices exhibiting a greater increase when the corresponding USD₮ minting event coincides with positive investor sentiment and is announced to the public by data service provider, Whale Alert, on Twitter."

Bitcoin price fell below $8000 for the first time in over a week on June 4 after several huge transactions appeared to move markets artificially.

Centralization is a well-known problem of crypto markets. People often referred to as whales control a fifth of some markets and have the strength to promote manipulation whenever they want to. Tether, however, seems to be facing an even worse situation: only 318 crypto addresses actually control 80% of the circulating supply of Tether.

When you see a large Tether print it means a handful of wealthy clients have essentially preordered batches of Tethers, days in advance, to then dump on the market-often before it's begun to surge. Buying significant amounts of USDT also allows whales to make trades on deeply liquid crypto exchanges that do not transact in fiat currencies.

The massive $2.27 billion bitcoin transfer that occurred on Monday has led to the emergence of fanciful theories that Tether might be creating a private dark pool for future USDT issuance.

The volume of bitcoin inflows into all major exchanges before the crash surged at around block 621.2K-a full three days before the actual dump. One suggestion is that this could've been a coordinated whale movement that initiated the mass sell-off.

LSE Economist Jon Danielsson argues that most of us would not want to live in a society where bitcoin succeeds, although the internal contradictions and perverse consequences of crypto-asset success mean that they are destined for failure. The value proposition for bitcoin is that it will displace fiat money, and Danielsson argues that there can only be either full displacement or no displacement, but full displacement is not desirable or feasible. If it succeeds (full displacement) the big holders ("whales") will become the wealthiest people in the world, and this would lead to greater inequality, social division and populism. However, if bitcoin becomes that successful, national authorities will jump in to protect their fiat currency monopolies, at which point the value of bitcoin heads to zero.

Last week, a crypto whale going by the moniker "Metakovan" bought a Beeple artwork via Christie's auction for $69 million-$60 million in ETH and $9 million in fees-outbidding a surprised Justin Sun, founder of the Tron blockchain, at the last minute.

A Bank of America research note estimated a net inflow into Bitcoin of just $93 million would result in price appreciation of 1%. By comparison, it found that it would take at least $2 billion worth of inflows to move the price of gold by a single percentile, while more than $2.25 billion would be needed to exert the same price impact on 20-year-plus treasury bonds. The researchers attributed the small amounts needed to move the price of Bitcoin to heavy accumulation from whales diminishing the number of coins available for purchase on exchanges. They found that the largest addresses have not been selling in aggregate since the pandemic began.

Analysts at QCP Capital, a team of traders in Asia, see several signs of "institutional exhaustion." They did a timezone analysis which broke down BTC moves into Asia hours vs. US hours (12 hours each). Since March last year, the clear pattern has been relentless US buying while Asian whales and miners have been on the offer.

XRP's price had gradually surged from $0.27 on January 25 to $0.40 on the 30th, the momentum contributing to a narrative that it was going to boom, despite the fact that a legal fight between Ripple and the SEC is in a very nascent phase. A couple of hours before 8:30am ET on February 1, with confidence reaching fever pitch, XRP hit $0.7448. At that point, whales began to offload their XRP and the coin's value dropped over the course of the morning to as low as $0.38. On the stock markets, pump and dumps like this are a form of securities fraud-but no such regulations exist in the crypto space.

One entity on the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex appears capable of sending the price of Bitcoin higher when it falls below certain thresholds, according to University of Texas Professor John Griffin and Ohio State University's Amin Shams. Griffin and Shams, who have updated a paper they first published in 2018, say the transactions rely on Tether, a widely used digital token that is meant to hold its value at $1.

To obtain publication, Griffin and Shams have released a weakened yet equally flawed version of their prior article. The revised paper is a watered-down and embarrassing walk-back of its predecessor that still suffers from the same methodological defects, coupled with the clumsy assertion that one lone whale may be responsible for the rise of bitcoin in 2017.