In my previous article, https://marketzen.blog/are-ethereum-whales-still-hodling/, I reported that ETH whales collectively were net buyers during the Jan 14 to 22 crypto market crash. In this article, I dig deeper into which whales were the largest net buyers and sellers during this crash.
The dataset that I prepared for this article can be viewed at the link below:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19RjyvwAiQa_0YManKId3IYCZ3cUBP8epRf5DZEWr4Cg/edit?usp=sharing
In the spreadsheet, the first tab lists the net inflows and outflows into each active whale wallet for each day between Jan 14 and 22. Column K (net_flow_sum) shows the aggregate net flow for the period for each wallet. This is the key variable that I use for the analysis. A positive net flow sum makes a wallet a net buyer, while a negative net flow sum makes it a net seller.
There are 538 active whale wallets. I wanted to analyze the most active of them (wallets with the biggest net buys and sells, using 3,000 ETH as a threshold). There are 88 buyers of at least 3,000 ETH, and 38 net sellers of at least 3,000 ETH. In total, there are 126 such wallets; the analysis is based on this subset.
Grouping the whale wallets as described above allows us to ask the following questions:
1. How old is the typical wallet in one group vs. the other?
2. What is the typical ETH balance in one group versus the other?
3. Given the above, did new whale investors panic-sell or buy the crash?
A wallet’s age is determined by calculating the number of days between the first day that ETH was deposited into the wallet and the last transaction date. A measure of what is ‘typical’ can vary. In this analysis, I use Median, not Average in the calculation. Median is usually a better measure of ‘typical’ because it is not affected by outliers in the data, whereas Average does get affected by outliers.
The chart below shows that the median age of the most active net-buyer wallets is 12 days versus 499 days for net sellers (a surprisingly large discrepancy). This suggests that the most active net buyers were actually the new whale wallets. By contrast, the older wallets (early investors) were the net sellers.
The tables below provide a more detailed picture of buying and selling activity. The first table shows that the newest 49 wallets, 0 to 2 weeks old, did the vast majority (85%) of total buying.
The next table shows that the wallets older than 2 years did the bulk of the selling, accounting for 64% of total selling.
The key takeaway: new whales overwhelmingly bought the crash.
Conclusion
New small investors are known to panic-sell during market crashes. By contrast, the data clearly show that the new whales have the opposite mentality: buy the dip, and load up during the crash, even as everyone else (including the older whales) was selling. I suspect that the new whales might mostly be institutions, which would bode well for a market recovery.
Stay tuned for a similar analysis on Bitcoin whales!