Cointelegraph Consulting: BTC whales buying big as retail goes bullish

Published at: Feb. 12, 2021

The latest findings by Santiment, published in Cointelegraph Consulting’s biweekly newsletter, indicate that the total amount of BTC held by addresses with 100+ Bitcoin has seen a particularly strong uptick since the news of Tesla investing $1.5billion in BTC, growing by an additional 20,490 BTC.

This brings the total amount of Bitcoin located in whale addresses to a new all-time high of just over 11.6 million, a number likely reflecting the increase in institutional participants over the recent time period.

The lunar calendar ended with a flurry of news that drove Bitcoin (BTC) annualized volatility to 125%, a figure not seen since April of last year. This has not deterred investors from buying BTC up to an all-time high, as the price flirts with breaking the $50,000 mark for the first time. A portion of this volume has been initiated from larger whale accounts, which should come as positive news for the retail investors.

Based on text data collected from over 1,000 crypto social channels, the amount of Bitcoin-related mentions surged to its highest level since 2019 when Facebook’s Libra announcement fueled more frantic buying from retail. 

This recent surge is easily dwarfing the chatter around BTC’s previous all-time highs from closer to the start of the year. With this increase comes a strong boost to investor confidence, as the average mood of Bitcoin-related messages had quickly shifted from ‘ambivalent’ on February 1st to ‘overwhelmingly bullish’ at the time of writing.

Overwhelmingly bullish can be a bad sign for the asset, especially when futures funding rates, such as on Bitmex, are pushed to the highest levels since June of 2019. When investors are all in agreement on the direction of the market, volatility in the opposition can cause cascading liquidations and panic-fueled selling.

Investors who monitor correlations with other asset classes will notice the moving average of BTC moving away from the S&P 500, ETH, and Gold moving averages. Even Ether (ETH), which has increased by 28% since Jan. 26 and reached $1,745, fails to compare with BTC’s 50% increase over the same time period.

Read the full newsletter edition here for more news and signals, complete with detailed charts and images.

Cointelegraph’s Market Insights Newsletter shares our knowledge on the fundamentals that move the digital asset market. With market intelligence from one of the industry’s leading analytics providers, Santiment, the newsletter dives into the latest data on social media sentiment, on-chain metrics, and derivatives.

We also review the industry’s most important news, including mergers and acquisitions, changes in the regulatory landscape, and enterprise blockchain integrations. Sign up now to be the first to receive these insights. All past editions of Market Insights are also available on Cointelegraph.com.

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