As the price of Bitcoin ($BTC) struggles to surpass the $40,000 mark and stay above it, data shows that both retail investors and whales have been accumulating the flagship cryptocurrency in what is being interpreted as a bullish sign.<\/p>\n
According to Barron\u2019s, technical indicators suggest that continued accumulation made by crypto whales \u2013 large holders \u2013 has been ongoing while \u201cretail sentiment is extremely bearish.\u201d Speaking to the news outlet Marcus Sotiriou, an analyst at digital asset broker GlobalBlock, noted that \u201cmany metrics suggest we are in an accumulation phase.\u201d Sotiriou said:<\/p>\n
Whale holdings have risen to its highest since September last year. We can see that when whale holdings increased dramatically last September, it led to a significant increase in price in November,<\/p>\n
The analyst added that as whales \u201chave a substantial impact on the market,\u201d whale holdings are an important metric to take into account. Whales\u2019 holdings have been growing as Panama\u2019s National Assembly passes a cryptocurrency bill and exempts crypto from capital gains tax.<\/p>\n
As CryptoGlobe reported, the CEO of cryptocurrency investment fund Pantera, Dan Morehead, has recently suggested that crypto is the \u201conly place to hide\u201d as the Federal Reserve hikes interest rates. Similarly, SkyBridge Capital\u2019s founder Anthony Scaramucci has suggested \u201ccryptocurrency markets represent tremendous growth.\u201d Notably, on-chain data from IntoTheblock shows that whales aren\u2019t the only entities accumulating BTC. <\/p>\n
The data shows that the balance held by address with less than 10 BTC has soared to 2.08 million coins, while the balance of addresses with between 0.01 \u2013 0.01 BTC and 0.01 \u2013 0.1 BTC has grown by 2% in the last 30 days.<\/p>\n
These accumulation patterns suggest that the balance held on cryptocurrency exchanges is dropping, meaning there\u2019s less supply available to meet demand. If demand were to surge in such a scenario, the price of the flagship cryptocurrency would likely rise.<\/p>\n