Bitcoin Exchange Inflows Flash Rare Signal As Large Deposits Return

On-chain data shows the average Bitcoin exchange deposit has ballooned to a significant size, a potential sign that whales are making inflows.

As pointed out by CryptoQuant community analyst Maartunn in an X post, the mean Exchange Inflow has shot up for Bitcoin. The “Exchange Inflow” here refers to an indicator that keeps track of the BTC transactions that are heading toward centralized exchanges from self-custodial wallets.

In the context of the current topic, the version of the metric that’s of interest is the one tracking mean exchange deposits. That is, this indicator measures the size of the average transfer that’s being sent to exchange-related wallets.

When the value of the metric is high, it means the average exchange inflow is significant in scale. Such a trend can be a sign that large entities are actively participating in exchange deposit activity. On the other hand, the indicator being low can suggest that smaller hands are the ones responsible for the current exchange inflows.

Now, here is the chart shared by Maartunn that shows the trend in the 7-day exponential moving average (EMA) of the mean Bitcoin Exchange Inflow over the past year:

As displayed in the above graph, the 7-day EMA of the mean Bitcoin Exchange Inflow has just observed a rapid surge, indicating that whales have potentially ramped up their deposit activity.

Generally, one of the main reasons why investors transfer their coins to exchanges is for selling-related purposes, so this spike in the mean Exchange Inflow may be a sign that the big-money hands are preparing to exit from the cryptocurrency. The latest high level of the indicator isn’t ordinarily seen, serving as a rare signal for the network. “The average BTC transaction sent to exchanges climbed to 2.62 BTC, a level that typically only appears during high-stress market moves,” explained the analyst.

From the chart, it’s visible that the last time the Exchange Inflow saw a similar surge was alongside the price crash at the start of February. It now remains to be seen whether the latest spike in the indicator will have any effect on the Bitcoin price.

In some other news, very old Bitcoin hands have shown activity recently, as Maartunn has highlighted in another X post.

From the chart, it’s visible that multiple large transactions involving tokens older than ten years have been spotted on the blockchain over the past couple of days. In total, these transactions have broken dormancy for about 600 BTC, worth about $41.2 million right now.

Bitcoin has made some recovery from its lows as its price has climbed back to $68,500.