Pisces Rise on Bitcoin Exchange, What Does It Mean?

On-chain data shows that the percentage of bitcoin exchange whales has increased recently. Here’s what that might mean for the price of the cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin exchange whale percentage (72 hour moving average) is over 85%

As one analyst pointed out in a CryptoQuant post, the BTC whale percentage is now on the rise. The “whale exchange ratio” here is an indicator that measures the ratio between the sum of the 10 largest Bitcoin transfers to exchanges and the total exchange inflows.

Here, the top 10 transactions going to the exchanges are assumed to be coming from whales, meaning that the value of the index tells us what part of the total exchange flows are being contributed by these giant owners at the moment.

When a whale percentage has a high value, it means that a large percentage of exchange deposits are currently being made by whales. Since one of the main reasons investors use exchanges is for selling purposes, this type of trend can indicate that whales are putting high selling pressure on the market, and therefore could be bearish in relation to the value of the asset.

On the other hand, the low values ​​indicate that the whale flow activity is not very significant compared to the rest of the market, a trend that can be neutral or bullish for BTC.

Now, here is a chart showing the trend in the 72-hour moving average (MA) of the bitcoin exchange whale over the past few months:

The value of the metric seems to have surged in recent days | Source: CryptoQuant

As shown in the above chart, the 72-hour MA bitcoin exchange whale ratio has recently surged to a high. This indicates that whales are very active in terms of exchange flow contributions at the moment.

In the past, a break of the gauge above the 0.85 mark for a prolonged period generally proved bearish for the cryptocurrency price. With this value, 85% of the flows come from whale entities.

With the recent rise in the index, its value once again breached the area above the 0.85 level, which could mean that the whales may be preparing for another major sell-off.

However, for a bearish scenario to become likely, the bitcoin whale ratio must remain at these high levels for at least several days. Earlier in the month, just before the rally started, the index entered this area, but since the rally didn’t last for long, the currency price didn’t feel any downward impact from it.

The chart also shows that the bottom that formed shortly after the crash of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange was accompanied by very low values ​​in the index, which means that lower selling pressure from whales may have helped form it.

BTC price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at around $22,900, up 11% in the past week.

Looks like the value of the crypto hasn't moved much in the last few days | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView

Featured image by Thomas Lipke on Unsplash.com, charts from TradingView.com, CryptoQuant.com