Bitcoin addresses with 10,000 or more bitcoin are sometimes referred to as whales. ➤ Learn more about the top 100 richest bitcoin addresses.
Satoshi Nakamoto: The pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto is believed to hold around 1 million BTC, making him potentially the biggest crypto whale with a value of approximately $19.2 billion.
Just 1.15% of Bitcoin stock is owned by a crypto whale — its founder Satoshi Nakamoto, making it the coin least dominated by whale investors.
Generally, someone owning at least 10 percent of a given cryptocurrency can be considered a whale. Others deem whale status to any crypto wallet that holds upwards of $10 million in a single cryptocurrency, or even a minimum of 1,000 BTC.
Last Updated June 21, 2023 8:40 AM
The creator of Bitcoin under the alias Satoshi Nakamoto is thought to be the largest Bitcoin holder. The Winklevoss twins, institutional investors like MicroStrategy, and governments like the United States and China are just a few examples of other well-known Bitcoin millionaires.
Tesla announced in an SEC filing Monday that it has bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin. The company also said it would start accepting bitcoin as a payment method for its products. CEO Elon Musk has been credited for raising the prices of cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, through his messages on Twitter.
The actions of large holders such as whales can give a solid indication of which cryptocurrencies are poised for growth. This is more evident by the fact that whales have started buying some new cryptocurrencies such as Love Hate Inu, Fight Out, C+Charge, Metropoly, and RobotEra.
As the market sees long-term growth, whales are selling off their stocks to lock in profits and reduce their holdings. Typically, large periods of contraction coincide with price appreciation cycles.
If a whale decides to start selling a substantial amount of coins, the price is likely to go down. Alternatively, if they start buying a huge amount of crypto, the price of the asset is likely to rise. Their single major buy or sell order could cause other investors to follow their lead.
A few large holders commonly referred to as whales continue to own most Bitcoin. About 2% of the anonymous ownership accounts that can be tracked on the cryptocurrency's blockchain control 95% of the digital asset, according to researcher Flipside Crypto.
However, some estimates can be made based on blockchain data and surveys of Bitcoin holders. According to data from Bitinfocharts, as of March 2023, there are approximately 827,000 addresses that hold 1 bitcoin or more, representing around 4.5% of all addresses on the Bitcoin network.
Market Manipulation
In a pump-and-dump scheme, whales buy large quantities of Bitcoin, driving up the price. Once the price reaches a certain threshold, they quickly sell off their holdings, causing the price to plummet. This allows them to profit from the price surge while leaving unsuspecting investors with losses.
On November 9, 2021, bitcoin briefly reached its highest market capitalization of $1.28 trillion with a price of $67,617.02 per bitcoin.
The current wallet with the largest amount of Dogecoin is owned by an investor from Robinhood, who holds around 29,461,944,068 Dogecoin as of June 2022. This equals about $1,886,428,988.
Dolphins are investors who have slightly large holding of cryptocurrency assets. Their ownership of cryptocurrency assets is larger than that of a “fish or octupus”, but not sufficiently large to be Whales. The ocean represents the crypto market, home to different fishes, big or small.
A more attractive price
The most obvious explanation for why Ethereum whales are buying Shiba Inu is that the digital coin has a much more attractive price than it's had in quite a while.
Undoubtedly the biggest cryptocurrency whale in the world, Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonym for the inventor of Bitcoin. We're not sure for certain whether this is a person or a group of people, but we do know they continue to hold ownership of around 1 million BTC.
Bitcoin price may hit as much as $120,000 by the end of 2024, almost quadruple the current price, expect analysts at Standard Chartered as increasingly cash-rich miners reduce their sales of the token. Bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency by market value, was trading 1.18% higher at $30,495.67 on Tuesday.
The size of the holding has to be large enough to cause a ripple effect on the price of the coin or NFT if the holder sells it all at once. For example, a bitcoin (BTC) whale is an entity that owns a large amount of bitcoin, usually a minimum of 1,000 BTC or $10 million and above.
Elon Musk on SNL. A Twitter account promoting the Shiba Inu cryptocurrency did not get what it was hoping for when it asked Elon Musk how much $Shib he owns. "None," was Musk's one-word response. Then Musk followed up: "Out of curiosity, I acquired some ascii hash strings called 'Bitcoin, Ethereum & Doge'.
Amid all the action, there's also no shortage of money to be made in the $2 trillion crypto economy. Just ask the record 19 billionaires—7 more than last year—on Forbes' annual World's Billionaires list, published Tuesday, who made their money from cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.
Just like a lot of other digital assets, Bitcoin has been built by its creator around the concept of a finite supply. This means that Satoshi has set a fixed upper limit regarding the number of Bitcoins that can ever come into existence. He set the Bitcoin supply upper limit at exactly 21 million.