Alongside a lackluster market, there has been a significant decline in whale activity across most major crypto assets.
According to Santiment’s latest analysis, Bitcoin and Ethereum are experiencing notable drops in transactions over $100,000.
Whale activity plummets
During the highly active period of March 13-19, Bitcoin saw 115,100 transactions valued at more than $100,000 each, reflecting intense activity by large holders.
However, from August 21 to 27, that number had almost halved to just 60.2 thousand transactions, indicating a significant slowdown. Ethereum mirrored this trend, with its whale transactions dropping from 115.1k to just 31.8k over the same period.
Similar trends are also seen in other major assets such as XRP, Toncoin and Cardano.
While this reduction in high-value transactions may seem worrisome at first glance, Santiment noted that a decline in whale activity does not inherently imply a bearish outlook. In fact, whale behavior often aligns with periods of increased market volatility, where big players move assets to take advantage of rapid price changes.
Today’s lower transaction volumes could suggest a phase of market consolidation or a temporary lull in volatility, rather than a precursor to a crash, according to the crypto-analytics platform’s tweet.
In addition, the data suggests that among the transactions that are still taking place, there is a pattern of accumulation by major addresses. Even in the face of reduced overall activity, it essentially indicates that the whales may be strategically positioning themselves for future market moves.
Rather than indicating a market exodus, the quieter activity could reflect a more cautious and calculated approach, with whales accumulating assets in anticipation of possible near-term price appreciation.
What’s in store for September?
QCP Capital’s latest analysis reveals that Bitcoin ended August down 8.6%, struggling to recover from the “BOJ crash” of the first month, and failed to break the 65k mark.
Ethereum fared even worse, falling more than 22% over the same time period, with the alleged sale of Jump Trading compounding its decline.
Looking ahead, September’s historical trend is tilted to the downside, with six of the last seven closing in the red and an average return of around 4.5%, which could see BTC fall to $55,000 if the trend persists.
Despite the recent turbulence, the Singapore-based trading app expects the crypto asset to find strong support around $54,000, a level that previously sparked a rally in July before reaching $70,000. Meanwhile, this week’s economic data, including jobless claims and non-farm payrolls (NFP) reports, is unlikely to significantly impact cryptocurrency prices given the waning influence of macro data on market
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