Apathy dominates among the Bitcoin whales, but not only

Bitcoin on-chain accumulation report, September 2023

Sometimes looking at the lack of price action on Bitcoin can be misleading.

There can be many things brewing under the surface. From derivatives positions buildups to large on-chain trends developing, underlying mechanism are shaping Bitcoin’s trajectory.

But currently there is none of that. Even under the surface the water is still.

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Apathy dominates among the Bitcoin whales

Bitcoin is open source, the blockchain is public, the network is permissionless. So there aren’t really insiders the same way there are insiders owning stocks of a public company. 

But the open nature of the blockchain allows you to track which addresses are accumulating and which addresses are distributing coins. Taken in aggregate this can be used as a way of gaiging the sentiment that’s driving Bitcoin’s movements at the most fundamental level.

This is what we do every month in this report and that’s the closest you’ll get from understanding what the Bitcoin insiders are doing.

The takeaway

Two things:

1. The whales cohorts aren't showing a clear trend towards the accumulation of distribution of coins. The whales are in a state of apathy and they are doing absolutely nothing. If even the whales can't be bothered to care then you know we have a problem of market sentiment.

2. The Bitcoin market, both on-chain and off-chain, is displaying very low levels of volatility. Another clear sign of apathy.

There is no underlying wave that's pushing Bitcoin forward at the moment.

This could be the result of a lot of uncertainty over the macro economic conditions for the next couple of quarters. Whales might be wary of getting caught on the wrong side of a liquidity crisis when the US slides into a recession. As a result they might have adopted a wait and see approach.

But that's only speculation. All we can say from the data is that very little is happening in the market on-chain. 

So let's have a look at it.

On-chain volatility, or lack thereof