Data on the chain shows that the number of sharks and whales in the Bitcoin network has increased to a new record, indicating the continued influx of large companies.
Bitcoin sharks and whales are sitting in record numbers
According to Santiment, a chain analytics company, there are currently a record number of Bitcoin investors holding more than 100 tokens. An indicator provided by Santiment is “Supply Allocation” which tells us about the total number of addresses that currently belong to a wallet group.
Addresses are divided into these groups according to the amount of coins they have in their balance. For example, the group of coins from 1 to 10 includes all investors who have between 1 and 10 BTC. Now, here is the Bitcoin supply distribution chart shared by Santiment, showing its value trend for three ranges: 0 to 1, 1 to 100 and 100+ coins:
Looks like the mid-tier investors have diverged in their behavior recently | Source: Santiment on X
As shown in the graph above, the distribution of Bitcoin supply for the 100+ BTC and 0 to 1 BTC groups has increased since mid-2024, showing this increase between the largest and smallest investors. The group of coins from 1 to 100, however, showed the opposite trajectory in this window; Addresses of this size have seen a decrease in their population.
At current rates, the lower and upper ends of the 1 to 100 coin cohort would be $72,000 and $7.2 million, respectively. Given this size, group-owned holders would be medium-sized institutions with more power than retail traders, but still insignificant compared to the largest holders. Today there are 954,000 addresses within this tier.
The decline in the number of these investors may be partly the result of promotion/advancement to other groups. In any case, the trend shows that the owner base has become more concentrated in the upper and lower ends in recent times. After an increase of 100+ coins, large investors saw their holdings rise to 20,031 BTC, a new all-time high (ATH). This range includes two key groups of Bitcoin investors, commonly referred to as sharks and whales.
As can be seen from the chart, Bitcoin sharks and whales have seen a slight overall downward trend between 2017 and 2024. However, something changed in mid-2024, with the focus on big money once again returning to cryptocurrency. So far, the new trend has held, but it remains to be seen whether the range of 100+ coins will increase in the near future or if it will once again find stability.
Just like how big investors saw their population hit new highs, retailers are also sitting on record. Currently, their Supply Distribution is worth 57.6 million which is much more than other groups.
BTC price
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is floating around $72,400, up more than 2.5% in the past seven days.
The trend in the price of the coin over the last five days | Source: BTCUSDT on TradingView
Featured image from Dall-E, chart from TradingView.com
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