Bitcoin Whales are Accumulating Bitcoin at Current Prices – What Information Do They Have?

Bitcoin (BTC) whales – the largest holders of coins on the network – have been accumulating BTC since the price first hit the $20,000 level in June this year, one leading analyst argues.

According to a tweet from Ki Young Ju, CEO of the crypto analytics platform CryptoQuant.com, the whale accumulation can be seen from a recent strong increase in exchange trading volumes, particularly on Binance.

Looking at all exchanges as a whole, volume increased over 20x over the past six months, with the vast majority of the increase coming from Binance, the tweet said.

“The volume renewed a year-high last month, but not much change in the daily closed price, indicating someone(s) is buying all the sell-side liquidity,” the CryptoQuant CEO wrote, before jokingly asking:

“@CZ_Binance sir, this is bullish, right?”

At the same time as volume has increased, the share of the overall trading volume that takes place on Binance – by far the largest crypto exchange by volume – “skyrocketed,” and is now at 84%, Ki Young Ju wrote. He added that Coinbase is the second-largest exchange by volume, with a 9% market share.

Whales are accumulating $BTC in #Binance.

Since #Bitcoin price hit the $20k level, @Binance spot trading volume dominance skyrocketed, and it's now 84%. The second biggest is Coinbase, 9%.

Not sure whether these whales are institutions using prime brokers or crypto OGs for now. pic.twitter.com/544NJo9T1z

— Ki Young Ju (@ki_young_ju) October 19, 2022

And while it is widely believed that Binance’s current fee-free trading promotion has contributed to increasing volume on that exchange, Ki Young Ju hinted that there could be more to this than what meets the eye:

“I agree that their zero-fee policy might have attracted more investors, but why do you think they are running wash trading bots? They were already the top exchange with half of the volume since 2020,” he pointed out.

When Binance first introduced zero-fee trading on some BTC pairs in July this year, trading volumes immediately surged. The cause behind it was likely traders that engaged in wash trading to increase their client status on the exchange, where high trading volumes was rewarded with various benefits.

To counter the problem of wash trading, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (“CZ”) said the zero-fee BTC pairs would be excluded from calculations for VIP status on the exchange.

In August this year, Binance also removed trading fees on some of its most popular ethereum (ETH) pairs, helping the exchange buck the trend on trading volumes despite falling crypto prices.