Bitcoin Whale Preference Remains Around Arbitrage
Below are the details of these large investors’ trading during the week.
Cryptocurrency arbitrage trading is a type of trading strategy in which investors take advantage of slight price discrepancies of a digital asset across various markets or exchanges. In its simplest form, cryptocurrency arbitrage trading, is the process of buying a digital asset on one exchange and selling it (almost) simultaneously on another, where the price is higher.
Despite the positive rally in Bitcoin price this week, whales maintained a pace closer to arbitrage than accumulation. Trading volume rose dramatically, while the dominance of exchange portfolio movements increased slightly.
Arbitrage Maintained Dominance Among Bitcoin Whales’ Preferences
Unlike previous weeks, during the past seven days the price of BTC came out of lethargy and recovered 70K. However, Bitcoin whales seem to be wary of these positive price movements and continued to trade between CEX wallets. In total, 907,000 BTC were traded from whale wallets this week in all possible directions.
19.29% of the coins (175,000 BTC) were sent from the centralized exchanges to the unknown wallets in a total of 350 transactions. The largest amount of coins, 120,000 BTC, issued from Binance.
11.25% of the coins (102,000 BTC) were sent from unknown wallets to exchange wallets in a total of 265 transactions. This trend is considered as a possible sale. The largest reception was on Binance with 65,000 BTC of this total.
46.31% of the coins (420,000 BTC) were distributed between wallets of various centralized exchanges. This type of transaction is for arbitrage purposes to take advantage of price differentials between different platforms. Here 520 transactions were reported. Meanwhile, the busiest route was from Binance to Kraken with 90,000 BTC and from Coinbase to Binance, with 60,000 BTC.
Finally, 23.15% of the coins (210,000 BTC) were sent mysteriously between different unknown wallets. Here, Bitcoin whales made 630 transactions.
Other Information of Interest This Week
This week, the price differentials between the main trading houses were enormous. To this must be added that a large amount of funds left KuCoin after the lawsuits in the US became known. Below, we present some additional data.
Wednesday, March 27, was the day with the highest number of shipments from exchanges to unknown wallets. During that day, whales sent 45,000 BTC into the accumulation. Of the total of 350 transactions from exchanges to unknown wallets, 275 were operated from Binance alone. The second place of departures went to Kraken with 45 and the podium was closed by Coinbase with 20 transactions.
The day of greatest selling pressure was Monday, March 25, when 30,000 BTC were sent from unknown wallets to exchanges. The largest recipient of transactions that week was Binance with 180, followed by Kraken and Coinbase with 40 and 30, respectively.
Wednesday the 27th was the day of greatest trading between wallets from different exchanges, with a volume of 85,000 BTC spread over a total of 120 transactions.
Based on the above, it can be concluded that Bitcoin whale activity is at a hot spot, with trading of almost 1 million BTC.
It is important to keep in mind that tracking whales can help understand and contextualize market movements, but financial decisions should not be based solely on these methods, since this would be doing away with other very important sources of information.
Therefore, investment decisions must be supported by research itself, and not just by monitoring whale movements.
By Leonardo Perez