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What Are The Whales Doing When They Acquire 5% Of The Stablecoin Supply?

Over the previous three weeks, the major stablecoins’ supply appears to have been acquired by whale entities, according to on-chain data, at a rate of approximately 5%.

Recent Supply of Stablecoin Has Been Consumed by Whales

The supply of stablecoins has recently been substantially increased by whales, according to data from the on-chain analytics company Santiment. Investors who possess a minimum of $5 million in cryptocurrency are referred to as whales.

This list of “major” stablecoins includes Pax Dollar (USDP), Dai (DAI), TrueUSD (TUSD), BUSD (BUSD), Tether (USDT), and USD Coin (USDC). The graph demonstrates the recent sharp increase in the share of the supply of these stables held by whale corporations.

This would imply that more of these tokens tied to fiat have been acquired by these significant holders. The data for the whole stablecoin market cap, which Santiment has also included in the same chart, seems to have been increasing throughout the same time frame.

The acceleration of the whale holdings’ increase, on the other hand, suggests that there may be other sources of accumulation than just the recently issued tokens of these assets.

It is impressive to note that during the last three weeks, the whales have added more than 5% of the total supply of these big stablecoins to their wallets.

What does the larger Bitcoin industry stand to gain from this accumulation by the whales? 

The whales may increase their holdings for two main reasons.

First off, stablecoins may be the preferred method of entry for certain new, large investors looking to enter the market. Secondly, whales are selling coins from the risky segment of the market, such as Bitcoin, to invest in these dollar-pegged coins for safety.

The former consistently signals the arrival of fresh cash and is bullish for the industry. The latter, however, may initially be pessimistic.

That being said, stablecoin supply—particularly that owned by whales—may be viewed as capital that is ready to be used. Therefore, it would seem from the recent steep spike in whale holdings that there may be a significant quantity of potential dry powder being gathered for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies right now.

Santiment also mentioned that the whales’ recent Bitcoin acquisition has been rather substantial in response to a user beneath this X post. This suggests that a bullish combination has been forming as stablecoins have experienced real capital inflows rather than just the whales shifting money from Bitcoin to stables.

April 2024, Cryptoniteuae

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Vaibhavv Ali
Vaibhavv Ali

Vaibhavv Ali is the founder and editor of Cryptonite (cryptonite.ae), an independent digital-asset news and analysis publication with a UAE focus. He covers virtual-asset regulation — VARA, ADGM and the UAE Central Bank — alongside real-world-asset tokenization, stablecoins and agentic AI in finance. Every Cryptonite article is human-edited and its sources are linked. He is also a celebrated speaker and host.

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