Bitcoin Whales Flee but Exchange Deposits Continue to Grow

Bitcoin withdrawals from exchanges massively outweighed deposits on Friday thanks to the activity of a handful of whales.

Data from Glassnode reveals that BTC withdrawals hit nearly 240 million USD in a single day. The outflow was the sixth largest seen this year. And transactions worth over 10 million USD accounted for around half of all withdrawals.

Net BTC transfer volume to/from exchanges (source: Twitter)

The same data shows that total exchange activity, both deposits, and withdrawals, has been rising. For example, on a single day in April, over 360 million USD worth of Bitcoin was deposited on exchanges. Then too, the surge in activity was driven by transactions in the $10 million+ range.

Ethereum Foundation Drives ETH Movement

And it isn’t only Bitcoin that is seeing greater movement on and off crypto exchanges.

On Saturday, the Ethereum Foundation transferred 15,000 ETH to a Kraken deposit address. Apparently signaling a selloff valued at around 30 million USD, based on previous trends, observers have speculated that the price of ETH could be about to fall.

In the past, the foundation has timed its selloffs right as the market peaks, taking advantage of high points in the ETH price cycle to maximize gains. And while the price of ETH shows no signs of a major downtrend at the moment, if history repeats itself it may be due a negative adjustment.

Exchanges Still Not Recovered From Post-FTX Mass Withdrawals

Overall, Glassnode data shows that the total balance of Bitcoin kept on major exchanges has increased since mid-March and currently stands at just over 2.3 million BTC. There is also around 18.1 million ETH deposited with crypto exchanges.

However, the total assets held on centralized exchanges have still not recovered from mass withdrawals between October and January.

Previously, it was common for there to be over 2.5 million BTC held by exchanges at any point in time. And at the height of March 2020, over 3.2 million BTC was deposited with exchanges.

BTC balance on exchanges (Source: Glassnode)

During this period, fears that contagion from the collapse of FTX could bring down another cryptocurrency exchange led many investors to seek alternative custody solutions for their assets.

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