- Bitcoin exchange reserve noted a drop in the past three weeks.
- The steady accumulation among whales signaled expectations of further price appreciation.
Bitcoin [BTC] has witnessed a massive price appreciation in the past three weeks. It was trading at $38.5k on 23rd January and rose to a local high of $52.8k on 15th February, representing a 37% gain in 23 days.
A huge part of this bullish sentiment can be attributed to the BTC ETFs. But as a recent Santiment post showed, whale accumulation also played a part in the price appreciation.
Recent findings fuel further bullish expectations
Santiment posted a chart on X (formerly Twitter) highlighting that wallets holding 1k to 10k BTC increased their holdings by 248.9k Bitcoin in 2024. This amounted to a whopping figure of $12.95 billion. The size of their wallets demarcated them as whales.
Meanwhile, wallets with 100 to 1k BTC dumped 151.2k coins in 2024, or $7.89 billion worth of Bitcoin. Additionally, the past five days also witnessed the highest level of whale transactions (transactions exceeding $100k) since June 2022.
Taken together, this was a sign that the Bitcoin sharks were taking profits and selling, possibly hoping for a deep retracement in the coming months. Meanwhile, the whales continued to ply their trade and accumulate BTC, confident that over the larger time horizon, their conviction would be validated.
Source: CryptoQuant
AMBCrypto analyzed the Bitcoin exchange reserve metric from CryptoQuant and found a downtrend over the past three weeks. The exchange reserve went from 2.106 million BTC to 2.068 million BTC from the 25th of January to the time of writing.
Combined with the Santiment data, it was evidence of accumulation. Hence, it supported the expectations that demand for BTC was higher than the supply, which would see prices trend higher still.
Source: CryptoQuant
However, a look at the stablecoin supply ratio showed the metric has been strongly rising in the past five months. This meant that the stablecoin supply witnessed its buying power reduce in recent months.
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While this highlights some bearishness for Bitcoin, overall, the metrics suggested that accumulation was underway.
In the short term, some volatility could arise since Bitcoin was trading at a key higher timeframe resistance zone at $52k.
