Coinbase, one of the leading U.S. cryptocurrency exchanges, has seen a major outflow of Bitcoin (BTC) from the platform.
According to Ki Young Ju, the CEO of leading on-chain analytics firm CryptoQuant, Coinbase saw 30,000 BTC, worth over $1.2 billion, leave the exchange’s coffers for cold wallets and custody wallets on Friday.
“30K BTC flowed out from Coinbase today,” Young Ju noted, adding that “[i]nstitutional buys might be the big narrative again because the Executive Order did not create any hurdle.”
Whale activity has seen a surge since Biden’s executive order last month, directing federal agencies to coordinate their approach to the crypto sector. A report from crypto analytics firm Santiment highlighted the fact that last week saw a “continued steady supply of ~4,000 whale transactions exceeding $1M + Monday through Friday, with mild slowdowns on weekends.”
🐳 #Bitcoin is seeing a continued steady supply of ~4,000 whale transactions exceeding $1M+ Monday through Friday, with mild slowdowns on weekends. Large increases are what we are looking out for to foreshadow a price bounce after April's retrace. 👀 https://t.co/GVhqxEWqf1 pic.twitter.com/uLQxu1C3RK
— Santiment (@santimentfeed) April 13, 2022
It’s worth noting that last week’s outflow is not an isolated event. March saw similar behavior.
Meanwhile, the CryptoQuant CEO suggested that old Bitcoin whales could be behind the recent selling while institutional investors are buying the dips to take advantage of the plunging crypto prices.
“Bitcoin old whales in two weeks ago: $47,000 sounds expensive. Let’s dump it here.
Institutions today: $40,000 sounds cheap. Let’s stack some $BTC.
Speculative guess but this fight seems to create a broad range sideways.”
Young Ju also pointed out that while the $1.2 billion BTC stash was most likely purchased by institutional investors in over-the-counter (OTC) deals, this figure, a part of which flowed into the existing cold wallets, is not significant.
According to the analytics firm head, these kind of transactions “seems to happen only when Coinbase decided to move a significant amount of BTC.”
Price Action
At last check, Bitcoin was trading just below the $39,000 level. The $740 billion market cap cryptoasset is down 6.57% in the last 7 days after printing highs of $48,000.
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