There was little response, if any, from these Bitcoin addresses to the recent price decline from $41,000 to $30,250. Only seven addresses moved a portion of their holdings out of their wallet since the latest all-time peak of $41,950 recorded on January 10.
Furthermore, only eight of the addresses that did some kind of transaction in the past 30 days have traded more than ten times since December 12.
As a matter of surprise, a major portion of these large addresses have yet to witness a bull run as eight out of the top ten have made their first transaction only after September 2018. The most recent Bitcoin address in the top 100 is only two months old.
Nevertheless, not all of them are individual whales. Ten of those addresses are owned by crypto exchanges such as Bittrex, Huobi, Binance and Kraken. Remaining are believed to be owned by a combination of institutional investors and high networth individuals. There is no way to distinguish between the two. However, one thing is clear. Large investors are not bothered about short-term price discrepancies or sentiment.
To make it into the list of top Bitcoin addresses, a person or entity must hold over $336 million worth Bitcoins. Roughly $2.20 billion is necessary to get a place in the top ten. Bitcoin addresses in the top 10 list are constantly monitored for multiple reasons, including the eagerness to identify Satoshi Nakamoto.
The Bitcoin address with the third largest holding containing 94,506 Bitcoins hogged the limelight in September 2019 after Glassnode pointed out that 73,000 of those Bitcoins had been moved out of Huobi exchange. It was believed to be the richest Bitcoin address held by a non-cryptocurrency exchange.
As per data provided by BitInfoCharts, 64 of the top 100 have never recorded a transfer of single satoshi. Over 2.50 million Bitcoins or roughly 13.5% of Bitcoins, worth about $85 billion, in circulation is controlled by these addresses. Eleven of those addresses are over nine years old. Even though none can empirically confirm that 300,000 Bitcoins held by those addresses are lost, many presume so.