Retail Investors Are Buying Bitcoin, Whales Are Selling

In today's daily dive, we'll cover some estimated accumulation and distribution trends for whales and retail entities. There are many different ways to define what constitutes a physical "retail" or "whale".

In this analysis, we define retail as the Bitcoin supply held by entities under 10 BTC, i.e. observe the behavior of any entity holding less than 10 BTC. We define whales as the supply of Bitcoin held by entities above 10 BTC and below 10,000 BTC. Glassnode's data science heuristics help define and identify different entities.

Retail Investors Are Buying Bitcoin, Whales Are Selling

It is useful to look at the 30-day percentage change of these groups to get a high-level view of how quickly retail or whale groups are adding or selling bitcoin. The chart below shows periods when two sets of supply increase, decrease, or in opposite directions

Currently, we are seeing a strong acceleration in retail buying over the past two months, while whale supply has declined slightly. The best sign (blue) is seeing both groups increasing their bitcoin supply, indicating strong demand. Usually in the last year, when whales are selling, the retail sector continues to add bitcoin on top of the local

Despite the smaller share of circulating supply, we have seen retail supply experience the fastest acceleration over the past few years, below 0.1 BTC. Retail tends to be always accumulating, with limited distribution periods.