For most of this month, Bitcoin Trading around the mid-$60,000s. This is a very dull thing.
Interestingly, there is a developing divide in coin ownership that could shape what happens next.
Data from Santiment shows that the number of wallets holding less than 0.1 BTC, which is typically associated with retail investors, has increased by 2.5% since the largest cryptocurrency hit a record high in October. The increase pushes the share of so-called shrimp in supply to its highest level since mid-2024.
However, in practice, it is the big holders known as whales and sharks who set the tone for the price direction. Investors with wallets holding between 10 and 10,000 BTC went the other way and fell about 0.8%.
This is the kind of split that produces volatile, disappointing price action rather than clean trends.
Retail provides a floor and can boost short-term momentum. Rallies that last require big players who are willing to buy whatever they find on offer.
This divergence is particularly notable because the picture looked different just a few weeks ago.
After Bitcoin hit $60,000 on Feb. 5 — a decline of more than 50% from its October peak — Glassnode’s Accumulation Trend Score climbed to 0.68, the strongest broad-based reading since late November, CoinDesk reported at the beginning of the month.
Glassnode’s metric measures the relative strength of accumulation across different wallet sizes by taking into account both the size of the entity and the amount of BTC accumulated over the last 15 days. A score closer to 1 indicates accumulation, while a score closer to 0 indicates distribution.
During the flash, the 10 to 100 BTC group was the most aggressive dip buyers, and the data shows that the market was shifting from capitulation to something more synchronized.
Sentiment’s broader lens complicates that reading. Its 10 to 10,000 BTC band captures a much larger share of large holders than Glassnode’s dip-buying group, and across that entire range, net positions are still negative since October.
One way to reconcile the two is this: medium-sized wallets may have actually caused the panic, while the largest holders kept distributing in every recovery, causing the total number to decline.
This matters because Bitcoin does not require retail sales to appear. Retail is already here.
This requires stopping or, even better, reversing distributions from large wallets. Without this, each rally risks being sold by the same group that needs to provide the structural demand to succeed.
The prawns are doing their work. They’re waiting for the whales to join in.