New Bitcoin whales spark sell-side risk as unrealized gains hit $9B

Bitcoin (BTC) whales have more reason to sell than at any time in Bitcoin’s recent history as their unrealized profits hit records.

Key points:

• Bitcoin short-term holder whales saw unrealized profits spike to $9 billion on Sept. 4, the largest reading ever tracked by CryptoQuant data.
• Profitability is sensitive to small BTC price fluctuations, falling by $1.5 billion on a 2% daily drop in BTC/USD.
• Binance exchange reserves are approaching two-year highs near 692,000 BTC.

Short-term holder whales sit on giant unrealized profits

Data from onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant shows that newer whale investors currently sit on unrealized gains worth exceeding $9 billion.

This is the largest figure CryptoQuant has recorded since it began tracking whale profitability in 2016. The reading concerns short-term holder (STH) whales — wallets holding coins that are less than six months old. 

On Sept. 4, the STH whale cohort’s aggregate unrealized profit hit a new multi-year high of $9.07 billion. However, being sensitive to movements in spot price, it fell by 17% the day after as BTC/USD declined just under 2%. This is because the breakeven point of STH whales is closer to the current spot price than that of LTHs. The cost basis of STH whales currently sits near $69,000.