Bitcoin Rally in October Driven Largely by Whales, Analyst Claims

A data analyst has said that the ongoing Bitcoin price surge has been driven by whales and that there haven’t been any big-short liquidations yet.

By Shomik Sen Bhattacharjee | Updated: 18 October 2021 18:59 IST

Bitcoin Rally in October Driven Largely by Whales, Analyst Claims

Bitcoin has been seeing notable gains in the past couple days

Highlights

Bitcoin rally may be driven by whale buying, not short squeeze
Short-squeeze yet to make a marked impact on Bitcoin rally
Bitcoin whales are buying big for the first time since May crash

Bitcoin is approaching its all-time high and demand for the cryptocurrency has jumped dramatically for bullish contracts across crypto exchanges. The world's most popular cryptocurrency, at the time of writing, is trading at $61,089 (roughly Rs. 45,96,677) on Coinbase, taking October's rally to over 40 percent. An analyst has now opined that the current Bitcoin rally has been driven by whales and that short liquidations are yet to make a major splash.

Ki Young Ju, the CEO of CryptoQuant — a well-known South-Korea based data analytics and research company — tweeted stating that Bitcoin prices lately have been driven by whales buying large amounts of the cryptocurrency through derivatives. This is a marked shift from what the trend has been over the past few months. Since BTC's crash back in May, Bitcoin bulls have been hesitant to buy big and shift focus temporarily to other assets like non-fungible tokens.

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This rally has been driven by whale buying, not short squeeze.

Massive $BTC buying market orders in derivative exchanges are not from short liquidations.

This indicates:
1/ There are no big short positions liquidated so far
2/ Whales punted long positions since the dip pic.twitter.com/Bbdvi9ag9n
— Ki Young Ju 주기영 (@ki_young_ju) October 15, 2021

In the crypto-world, a 'short squeeze' is an event where the price of an asset skyrockets over a short period of time as leveraged short positions get liquidated or, as the phrase suggests, 'squeezed'. This creates a snowball effect where the higher the price goes, the more shorts get wiped off, boosting the price further. On the other hand, whales are basically majority asset holders, whose movements and dealings have a marked impact on the market.

According to the latest data published by Santiment, Large Bitcoin addresses holding between 100 and 1,000 coins have shot by approximately 2 percent in the last month. "254 more of these whale addresses now exist compared to five weeks ago, which is a notable 1.9 percent increase in this short time period,” Santiment mentioned in a recent Tweet, shedding more light on the increased amount of whale activity as Bitcoin prices surge.

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