Whales are more or less the celebrities of the coin market. Despite the fact that “whale watchers” do not know the owners of the wallets containing coins that are valued millions of dollars, the interest in whales largely is speculative because traders and news watchers are aware that the movement of substantial volume of a cryptocurrency must have impact on the market.
Crypto speculators during the week noticed the movement of 30,000btc from a wallet belonging to a whale. Of interest is the fact that the said wallet still has 168,700btc in it stirring a debate on the motive behind the movement.
Some commentators speculated that the wallet may belong to a major exchange such as Bitfinex while others referred to known Bitcoin whales such as Tim Draper.
In the course of the debate another wallet moved another 30,000btc in what may not be a coincidence. There were speculations that it may be a whale preparing for a dump while others said that it could be an exchange preparing for a huge sale.
The fact that the volume matched the amount ceased by the FBI from a past dark web operation prompted some commentators to link the wallet to a purchaser of US Marshal Services auction.
Despite the conjectures, it was obvious that no one was certain who owned the wallets. Neither could any be sure why they are moving the coins. What interested some analysts was the cost of the transactions. The 30,000btc valued at $192 million and $193 million for the first and second transactions respectively cost the owners just $0.19, transactions that would have has an astronomical fees attached to by banks.
It is a reflection of what could be accomplished using the distributed ledger technology. The anonymity it bestows on transactions is one of the reasons many are attracted to it.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin has stabilized above $6,400 with the coin trading at above $6,500 by Saturday after a strong correction rally during the week. Analysts have been predicting that BTC and consequently the coin market to have bottomed out. However, the next few weeks will give a clear signal if that is true.
There are indications that institutional investors believed to be the catalysts that would move the coin market to its next developmental stage are keenly eager to take positions in a market that has been described as volatile and with great potentials yet unregulated.
Banks such as Citigroup and Morgan Stanley have recently expressed interest in tradable bitcoin assets apparently incentivized by the publicized Goldman Sachs’ Bitcoin trading desk.
Alistair Milne, the chief information officer at Altana Digital Currency Fund described the growing significance saying, “Goldman, Citibank, ICE. Now Morgan Stanley. All launching Bitcoin products and services because there’s no institutional demand.
Institutional money took the hedge fund industry from $300 billion to $6 trillion,” in a sarcasm that indicated that the big players now know there is money in cryptocurrency and are eager to get in.
