Five New Wallets Added to Bitcoin Top 300 in Past 24 Hours — January 4, 2021
One of the trends that measures how hot the Bitcoin bull rally is running is the number of new Bitcoin wallets entering the Top 300.
Currently there are five new whale-sized wallet addresses that have entered into the top 300, all in the span of the first week of January 2021. Overall in January 2021, there are a total of 11 new wallets.
The current new wallets are: 32; 35; 36; 49; 103; 239; 240; 241; 276; 293; and 298. The last five are the newest, by my estimation.
I look for trends like the addition of new wallet adresses in the top 300 to measure the momentum of largescale and long-run trading rallies, such as the current nearly parabolic Bitcoin rally that some investors are saying is driven by loads of institutional buying.
As of today, the Bitcoin price is about US$33,400 but reached a high on some exchanges of nearly US$35,000 overnight, Hong Kong time. It has risen nearly US$ 24,000 in about two months.
Many people have been following the stock-to-flow thesis that shows that after every “halvening” Bitcoin’s price rises exponentially to reflect a supply shortage and because its exponential rise drives countless media statements and loads of attention, driving FOMO purchasing of the scarce asset. Bitcoin’s algorithm mines Bitcoin’s in blocks of time that are measured by computer hashing power and problem-solving difficulty. After each block is mined, a small number of Bitcoins is awarded to miners whose machines are cracking the cyphers that unlock the newly “minted” coins. Currently, about 900 bitcoins are awarded to miners each day.
We are currently right in the midst of the beginning of one of these post-halvening rallies and the market has suddenly caught on to the idea of a supply shortage that has become increasingly dire due to many institutional buyers of Bitcoin.
While this rally is surprising to the general public, experts tracking Bitcoin for many years say that this not-unexpected rally is creating all sorts of price goals that they believe will be reached — from US$100,000 by year end to even a Bitcoin end-of-year probable price of about US$1.2 million.
Given the froth around the media space, and the unreliability of chart analysis in a market driven right now by OTC trading and private deals, it makes sense to track on-chain data to get a sense for any canaries that might be flying into the coal mine.
Big Wallets Don’t Move Much, But When They Do…
One of the data sets I look at is Top 300 Bitcoin Wallets. It shows you how much Bitcoin is being held by the top 300 wallets that are in the space. When these wallets start to replace older wallets that have not moved for a while, we are looking at a possible cooling off signal for the rally.
When new wallets enter the top 300, it signals that newly minted “whales,” or people with thousands of Bitcoin, are done trading or acquiring, and are parking their funds somewhere for a bit. Bitcoin can still travel in and out of these wallets, but the shift of ratio between old and new wallets is instrumental in measuring changes in momentum. The bulk of the Bitcoin in these wallets are likely there to accrue value over time and will not be used for purchasing or trading activity, that I know of.
There are caveats to this data.
For example, some of the existing wallets are exchange cold wallets, custodial sales wallets and general hot wallets for daily activity managed by exchanges.
And there are a large number of very large Bitcoin Wallets that have not moved in many years. it’s impossible to know if these wallets are being kept dormant on purpose, but it is likely that these coins are never going to move and are never going to be available because they are lost, the owners are dead or gone, or (unlikely) the owners don’t care about their contents.
You can see a general breakdown of the quantities in wallets and their numbers below.
I’ll be updating these pages with summaries as much as I can and will highlight information that seems pertinent to investors, traders or the curious. Thanks.
