This Bitcoin Metric Is “One Of Crypto’s Top Leading Indicators”: Santiment

The on-chain analytics firm Santiment has explained how this Bitcoin indicator has been one of the top leading indicators in the cryptocurrency market.

In a new post on X, Santiment has discussed about a metric that has historically been one of the top leading indicators in the sector. The metric in question is the total amount of supply held by the Bitcoin investors carrying at least 10 BTC in their wallets.

At the current exchange rate of the cryptocurrency, this cutoff is equivalent to around $683,000. As such, the investors holding sums of this scale or higher would be larger than the regular retail holders.

Key groups such as sharks and whales fall in this range. These cohorts are generally considered to be influential beings, so their behavior can be worth keeping an eye on.

While the 10+ BTC group wouldn’t solely include these large investors, the trend in its holdings would still at least in part encapsulate what these key holders would be doing.

Now, here is a chart that shows the trend in the combined holdings of investors carrying balance in this range over the last few years:

As displayed in the above graph, the Bitcoin supply held by investors belonging to this group has been going up recently, suggesting that accumulation has been occurring from the large holders.

According to Santiment, there has historically been a pattern between the price and the behavior of the investors falling in this range. “When they accumulate, cryptocurrencies rise. When they dump, extended bear markets come,” explains the analytics firm.

Instances of this trend are also visible in the chart. The supply held by this cohort started rising in October 2019 and kept up the rise throughout the bull run that followed in 2021.

In February 2022, the behavior of these Bitcoin investors changed, however, as their combined holdings started heading down instead. This led into the bear market.

The decline stopped after the FTX crash back in November 2022 and the holdings of these investors took to sideways movement in 2023. At the end of the year, another shift finally happened as the metric gained an uptrend.

This accumulation likely kicked off because of the imminent spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) approval in January. These investors kept up this buying pressure post-approval as well, which all culminated into the rally towards the new all-time high (ATH).

Despite the struggle that Bitcoin has faced recently, the trend in the indicator hasn’t flipped. As such, more bullish price action could be ahead for the asset, if historical pattern is to go by.

Bitcoin has fallen back to sideways movement recently, with its price trading around $68,300 at the moment.