The crypto market has been a gut-wrenching site for most of the cryptocurrency investors in the year 2018. Bitcoin fell to almost 80 percent from its all-time high, and most of the other cryptocurrencies had to face a 90 percent or more of the decline. So far as of now, the prices have fallen and stayed low for very long. When it comes to the cryptocurrency- Ethereum, the data of the blockchain indicates that large-scale holders familiarly called as “Whales” have survived the downfall.
According to the Researches from Diar, there are approximately five hundred active Ethereum traded addresses amongst the largest 1000 addresses. Since January, these active addresses have accumulated humongous amounts of ether in this year by growing their ETH holdings by more than 80 percent which is more than any other period in Ethereum’s trading history. By the end of November, collectively these active addresses held about 20 million ETH, the funds which are worth more than 2.2 billion dollars and they are constituting about 20 percent of the overall circulating supply of ETH. Diar attributes that the growth in the whale holdings to investors sourcing on initial coin offering (ICO) tokens, which have been one of the worst performers in this year 2018. In addition to the pressures growing from the many regulatory agencies and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) across the world, most of the startups that are funded by ICOs have already failed to deliver on their roadmaps.
Startups such as “Sirin Labs,” the creator of blockchain smartphone has often found that their token has been continuing the trades at a severe discount to their initial exchange listing prices and ICO. Even after this backdrop the traders who have diversified their holdings in this Ethereum into ERC-20 tokens, are beginning to compensate their losses and trying to consolidate them back into ETH.
According to the reports, “Ether holdings has the massive growth from the active whales that might and are almost likely to result the exiting traders by token tradings, most of them which are have been paired with the ETH, which have decreased rapidly in their value by all of the accounts versus the start of the year.”
However, the rate of increase in the whale holdings has not correlated with a huge expansion in the number of addresses that evolve and qualify as whales. Since the January this year, the number of active addresses of whales has dropped by 30 percent, further concentrating the supply of these amongst the other smaller group of addresses. The ETH supply is not concentrated much than it used to get during the beginning of the year 2017 when the whales have held at an around 33 million ETH, which is more than the one-third of the total supply of ETH at the time.
