Bitcoin & Ethereum Whale Populations Quietly Growing, On-Chain Data Reveals

On-chain data from Santiment shows both Bitcoin and Ethereum whale address counts grew in August, signaling steady accumulation.

In a new post on X, on-chain analytics firm Santiment has revealed how the whale populations have shifted on the Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchains recently. Whales refer to the key stakeholders of a cryptocurrency who hold amounts large enough that they can carry some degree of influence in the market.

The exact scale of these investors is defined differently across networks. For BTC, whales are considered to be entities carrying more than 1,000 BTC (equivalent to $112 million at the current exchange rate), while for ETH, the threshold is 10,000 ETH ($46.4 million).

Now, here is the chart shared by the analytics firm that shows how the total number of whale-sized wallets has changed on each of these networks over the past few months:

As is visible in the above graph, the Bitcoin whales saw their count plummet back in July, implying a notable number of these investors exited from the market near the rally high.

In August, the metric has made gradual recovery for the cryptocurrency, with there now being 13 more such wallets compared to the start of the month. While this isn’t anything too big, it does indicate that big-money investors are slowly buying back in.

Ethereum has also seen its whale population go up during the same window and the increase has been more dramatic in its case. In total, 48 new whales have joined the blockchain since August began.

Given the key position that these investors occupy in the market, the sentiment among them is often worth keeping an eye on. With a buying push occurring from them right now, it would seem that their outlook is bullish, particularly in the case of ETH.

In some other news, Bitcoin has witnessed a sharp decline in capital inflows recently, as analyst Willy Woo has explained in an X post.

Bitcoin is today seeing around less than $1 billion per day in capital inflows, which is significantly down compared to the earlier peak above $2 billion per day. Interestingly, in the same period as BTC has seen inflows dry up, ETH has observed them pick up instead.

This could be an indication that investor interest has been rotating from the former to the latter. Following the uptrend, Ethereum inflows have risen to almost the same level as BTC ones, meaning that a flip could occur soon.

Bitcoin has seen some recovery from its recent low as its price has climbed back up to $112,500.