Dispatch #213: The New Bitcoin Whales

Oct 11 3 min read

Dispatch

In this patch of your weekly Dispatch:

Latin American Adoption ➕
A Stablecoin Leader 🎂
Inflation Cheers 🕯️

The Big Idea

BTC: Between New and Old Holders

It’s always a battle of ideas around Bitcoin and its price. Looking at the last seven days, we’ve seen notable see-saw movements, with BTC remaining roughly the same on the weekly chart. This action is driven by a multitude of factors.

Sometimes, it’s progressive legislation or favorable macro. Оther times, it’s a welcomed monetary decision or good old-fashioned ETF-driven hype in the markets. And there’s at least one more market-moving entity: the next generation of Bitcoin whales, as highlighted by CryptoQuant. Here’s the low-down:

New Bitcoin Whales Surge: Investment by new Bitcoin whales has surged 13 times in 2024 to $108B as of October 6. These wallets now hold 48.8% of Bitcoin’s realized cap, nearing the $113B owned by "old whales." CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju refers to this as a “generational shift,” suggesting that new whales could soon surpass their older counterparts.

Active Addresses Rebound: On October 8, Bitcoin’s active addresses broke an 11-month downtrend, signaling renewed network activity and organic growth. Jamie Coutts of Real Vision pointed out that this uptick in adoption across key Bitcoin metrics reinforces the potential for Bitcoin to serve as a global monetary network, although the predictive significance of active addresses has weakened over the last four years.

Volatility Risks Ahead: Short-term BTC holders lean toward profit, with a 1.2 profit-to-supply ratio, suggesting positive sentiment. However, rising open interest in futures contracts indicates heightened speculation. Combined with macroeconomic uncertainty, this exposes the market to potential volatility due to deleveraging pressures and liquidations, according to Glassnode.

Could a healthy dose of Bitcoin optimism be a big idea on its own? It’s shared with banking giant Standard Chartered, which says that recent dips below $60,000 are merely buying opportunities. There’s the Big Idea!

The Latest In…

SOL to Moon?

Standard Chartered's crypto insights don’t stop there. Their latest research highlights Solana's (SOL) potential for significant growth depending on the outcome of the U.S. election. The report, authored by Geoffrey Kendrick, head of crypto research, suggests that shifts in regulatory policy could shape the future of digital assets like SOL and ETH. “In either scenario, both SOL and ETH are poised to outperform Bitcoin (BTC) in the coming years,” Kendrick states. Under favorable conditions, Solana could experience up to 400x growth, the report argues.

The Latest In…

Tether’s Tenth

Tether has surpassed 350M users on October 7, just a decade after its 2014 launch. Talk about adoption. This record reflects a 24% increase in users year-over-year, up from 282M in 2023. Tether now holds the highest market capitalization among stablecoins, valued at $119.6B.

The Latest In…

Time for the Fine Cuts?

September’s inflation numbers came in hotter than expected, with the US CPI rising 0.2%. That matched August’s pace but beat the forecast of 0.1%. On a yearly basis, CPI hit 2.4%, edging above the predicted 2.3%. Core CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, also surpassed expectations, climbing 0.3%.

Bitcoin reacted to the report by dipping below $61,000, trading at around $60,800. After cutting rates by half a point in September, Fed officials have signaled more gradual cuts – a quarter-point at each of their last two meetings this year – if inflation continues to ease. That could lower rates to around 4.3%.

The Week’s Most Interesting Data Story

At What Price Did You Get Your Last Coins?

The UTXO Realized Price Distribution (URPD) chart reveals where Bitcoin holders made their purchases, i.e., each bar shows the amount of existing bitcoins that last moved within that specified price bucket. With the current spot price nestled near a large cluster of UTXOs, small price fluctuations could significantly impact many investors.