On-Chain Activity Soars As Crypto Crumbles, 'Mega-Whales' Buying The Bitcoin Dip As Retail Runs For Exits
Crypto prices are rebounding this morning, after further weakness over the weekend to its lowest since Trump's election victory.
“From a technical perspective, the recent drawdown is bringing price closer to attractive levels,” said Joel Kruger, a markets strategist at LMAX Group.
Bitcoin is likely to find “strong support” should it drop to around $70,000, he said.
Other cryptocurrencies like Ether and Solana also staged modest rebounds after slipping earlier Monday.
“For crypto specifically, ETF flow stabilization is the key signal to monitor,” said Timothy Misir, head of research at digital asset analytics firm BRN.
“Without it, rallies are likely to fade.”
Interestingly, Goldman points out that in contrast to the declining price performance, on-chain activity painted a different picture, especially for the Ethereum and Solana networks.
Activity across the Bitcoin network was down over the month, suggested by decreased average daily transaction count (-14.9% MoM), average daily new addresses (-3.6% MoM) and average active addresses (-2.7% MoM) (Figure 2).
However, for Ethereum, average daily active addresses, new addresses, and transaction counts were up by +27.5%, +26.8% and +36.0% MoM respectively.
For Solana, average daily active addresses and transaction counts were up by +24.3% and +8.2% MoM respectively (Figure 10).
Looking at Ethereum specifically, we are seeing an ATH in daily new addresses.
On average, Jan saw 427k new addresses – if we compare this to the 2020 ‘DeFi summer’, the average daily new addresses back then were 162k.
In terms of activity, we have registered 1.2m daily active Ethereum addresses – another ATH from a 7-d moving avg basis
Separately for Ethereum, Goldman notes that the market cap is now below its realized market cap (which values each coin at the last time they moved on the network - representing the aggregate cost basis), signifying that most ETH holders are now sitting on a loss...
Meanwhile, as James Van Starten reports below for CoinDesk.com, very large investors, or whales, holding 10,000 bitcoin or more are currently the only ones that are buying the largest cryptocurrency as prices plummet.
All other holder groups are hitting the sell button, according to onchain data.
This divergence is highlighted by Glassnode’s Accumulation Trend Score by wallet cohort, which measures the relative behavior of different entity sizes based on both balance and the amount of bitcoin acquired over the past 15 days. Scores closer to 1 indicate buying, while values near 0 signal selling.
Bitcoin accumulation trend (Glassnode)
According to Glassnode data, the largest whales are in a "light accumulation" phase and have maintained a neutral-to-slightly-positive balance trend since bitcoin fell to $80,000 in late November. During this period, price has largely consolidated, trading within a $80,000 to $97,000 range through the end of January.
Bitcoin is now trading near $78,000, according to CoinDesk data.
In contrast, all smaller cohorts are net sellers, particularly retail holders with less than 10 BTC.
This group has been in persistent selling for over a month, reflecting continued downside and risk aversion among smaller participants.
At the same time, the number of unique entities holding at least 1,000 BTC has increased from 1,207 in October to 1,303.
Number of Entities with balance 1k BTC (Glassnode)
Since bitcoin’s October all-time high, growth in this cohort suggests that larger holders have been buying into the correction.
Whales holding at least 1,000 BTC are now back at December 2024 highs, reinforcing the view that large players are absorbing supply while smaller holders continue to exit.