On-chain data shows the short-term holder Bitcoin whales have returned to a state of profit following the recovery surge in the asset’s price.
Bitcoin Is Back Above Realized Price Of New Whales
As explained by on-chain analytics firm CryptoQuant in a new post on X, the Bitcoin short-term holder whales are back in the green. The “short-term holders” (STHs) refer to the BTC investors who purchased their tokens in the past 155 days, while “whales” are the holders with more than 1,000 BTC in their balance.
The STH whales, therefore, would be the big-money traders who got into the market during the last five months. They are also known as “new whales.”
STHs are generally fickle-minded investors who tend to panic during periods of volatility. Likewise, they are also prone to showing a reaction when their break-even level gets retested, or their profit-loss status gets flipped.
The recent bearish action in the Bitcoin price meant that the STHs as a whole fell into losses. The recovery that the coin has seen in the last few days, however, has resulted in a return of profitability for the cohort.
Below is the chart shared by CryptoQuant, which shows the trend in the “Realized Price” (a measure of the average cost basis) of the STH whales over the last few years.
Looks like the price of the coin has recently broken back above this line | Source: CryptoQuant on X
As displayed in the graph, the Bitcoin STH whales currently have their Realized Price around $112,788. At present, the cryptocurrency’s price is sitting 2% above this mark, implying the group is in a net unrealized profit of 2%.
While this isn’t too significant a profit, the fact that the STH whales are no longer under distress could still be notable. “This marks a key psychological shift for the market,” noted the analytics firm.
The STH whales hold about 1.14 million BTC today, as the below chart shows.
The breakdown of the BTC supply between new and old whales | Source: CryptoQuant on X
The new whales have seen some rapid growth in their combined balance recently, but the long-term holder (LTH) or old whales still dominate the cryptocurrency’s supply.
Despite holding on such a large portion of the supply, the LTH whales haven’t been participating in much profit-taking during the past few days, as pointed out by CryptoQuant author IT Tech in an X post.
The data for the BTC Exchange Inflows coming from the LTHs | Source: @IT_Tech_PL on X
From the chart, it’s apparent that Bitcoin exchange deposits involving coins older than six months have stayed muted recently. “This signals that long-term conviction remains strong, with little sign of distribution,” explained the analyst.
BTC Price
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $115,000, up almost 3% over the last week.
The trend in the price of the coin over the last five days | Source: BTCUSDT on TradingView
