Cryptocurrency market update: Bitcoin whales holding $36 billion worth of BTC – Diar research reveals

Bitcoin accumulation has been on the rise in the past year. At the moment about 26% of all the BTC in circulation is sitting idle in various large-volume crypto wallets according to a new research released by Diar, a research analytics firm.

According to the report wallet addresses holding between 1000 – 10,000 BTC has the amount stored in them increase by 7% in comparison to the same time a year ago. Diar’s statement reads:

“Over 26% of circulating supply, $36Bn worth of Bitcoin, now sit in addresses that have a balance of 1000-10k BTC. In August 2018 when Bitcoin was also at $8000, these ‘Firm Size’ addresses held under 20% of the circulating supply showing a sharp accumulation of nearly 7% in less than a year.”

While looking into the BTC held by whales, Diar put aside 96 addressed that are currently owned by the leading crypto exchange, Coinbase. Coinbase transferred 856,000 BTC to new cold storage facilities in December 2018. However, this BTC declines by 11% to the current 760,000 BTC.

“A surge in the 1-10k Bitcoin address bracket in December 2018 was likely the result of Coinbase shifting approximately 5% of supply into new cold storage security facilities.”

At the same time, the BTC held in wallet addresses between 1 BTC to 10,000 BTC increased significantly in December 2018 as Bitcoin plunged to new 2018 lows. These addresses held in total about 1.2 million Bitcoins. The wallets address holding between 1 -100 BTC saw an increase by 126,000 Bitcoins in the past six months. Diar said in conclusion:

“Overall, these [retail] addresses hold, as of date, 38% of Bitcoins circulating supply (see chart 4). Accounting for inflation, however, this segment remains fairly stable and unlikely the driving cause of recent price spikes.”