Mooners and Shakers: Bitcoin flat, but whales are stacking; Aptos blockchain makes rocky start

October 19, 2022 Editor Blockchain 0

If you listen to crypto haters like Peter Schiff, they’ll tell you Bitcoin’s been left behind and looking lost amid the latest little stocks surge. Under the surface, though, it looks like BTC whales are accumulating.

And it’s true that Bitcoin and the crypto market as a whole is struggling for a bit of direction at this present moment. In fact, if there was an award for the best-performing sideways-moving asset outside of stablecoins, then Bitcoin would be in with a great shout.

Here was  Peter “I Bar Up Over Gold More Than Francisco Pizzaro” Schiff’s latest Bitcoin-related comment, by the way:

However, there’s the odd bit of on-chain research popping up here and there in our content feeds that would indicate at least some potential for a positive break out of the excruciatingly low Bitcoin/crypto volatility we’re currently in.

 

Bitcoin-gobbling whales

For instance, data from the blockchain research firm Santiment indicates whales (holders of large amounts of a given asset) are accumulating Bitcoin at these US$19k-ish levels.

As BTC’s price continues its crab impression, addresses holding between 10,000 to 100,000 BTC have apparently reached their highest level since February 2021. That, by the way, turned out to be a pretty bullish month for crypto, although past performance is not indicative of future resu… ah, you know. 

 

$940m in Bitcoin exits exchanges

And another little nugget of possibly positive info has come from another blockchain analytics firm, CryptoQuant, which suggests that about US$940 million worth of Bitcoin (48k BTC) has just moved off major crypto exchange Coinbase.

This sort of large BTC movement is sometimes regarded as a good sign, indicating whale holders are looking to secure their asset in cold storage reducing the likelihood of selling/trading.

Additionally, more than 121,000 BTC (over US$2.3 billion), has left exchanges in the past 30 days.

The red lines on the CryptoQuant chart below indicate exchange outflows. It doesn’t always follow that the outflow spikes are harbingers for price rallies, but that big outflow that occurred in mid June certainly saw some subsequent positive price action.

This latest exchange outflow is the biggest since June.

Bitcoin netflow from all exchanges. Source: CryptoQuant

 

Onto some daily price action.

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at US$966 billion, down about 1% since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

As indicated above, Bitcoin and its fancy top 10 friends are still hanging out somewhere on the Nullarbor Plain, dreaming of mountain-range visual stimulation.

Clocking into some well-known go-to Crypto Twitter analysts, and the feeling is mixed. Justin Bennett, for one, doesn’t actually sound so confident any more that a rally is particularly imminent, citing “unfinished business sub $19k”.

However, “il Capo of Crypto” is satisfied there’s been a double touch of support around the low $19k level and is going, er, “long and strong” on a potential double bottom…

Meanwhile, just touching on the leading layer 1 smart-contract blockchain for half a second, Aussie Ethereum educator Anthony Sassano points out some post-Merge issuance reduction for ETH in this tweet below. A very good thing for the crypto’s deflationary-asset narrative.

 

Aptos makes rocky debut

Aptos, yet another layer 1 blockchain hitting the crypto space has made its highly anticipated mainnet debut.

Anticipated, because it’s borne from  Meta’s defunct Diem blockchain project, and there has been millions of VC dollars pumped into this one from the likes of Parafi, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), FTX, and Multicoin Capital.

The blockchain’s native APT token is now set to make its debut on the market, however, Aptos has been copping a barrage of criticism for its lack of transparency so far with regards to its token distribution model.

News has leaked that some 51% of the initial 1 billion APT supply is sitting with VCs, with another 190 million going to core developers for the project.

This hasn’t gone down well.

At the time of writing, the APT token is listed on crypto market aggregation sites such as CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap, however, there is no price data available yet, and the project will be featured as an “untracked listing” for the moment until full support is integrated from crypto-trading platforms.

 

Uppers and downers: 11–100

Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$7.16 billion to about US$392 million in the rest of the top 100, let’s find some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time. (Stats accurate at time of publishing, based on CoinGecko.com data.)

DAILY PUMPERS

• Frax Share (FXS),(market cap: US$453 million) +10%

• Aave (AAVE), (mc: US$1.17 billion) +5%

• Arweave (AR), (mc: US$515 million) +3%

• Curve DAO (CRV), (mc: US$500 million) +2%

• Polygon (MATIC), (mc: US$6.45 million) +2%

 

DAILY SLUMPERS

• Quant (QNT), (market cap: US$2.68 billion) -11%

• EthereumPoW (ETHW), (mc: US$738 million) -5%

• LEO Token (LEO), (mc: US$4 billion) -4%

• Lido DAO (LDO), (mc: US$4 billion) -1%

• The Graph (GRT), (mc: US$618 million) -4%

 

Around the blocks

A selection of randomness and pertinence that stuck with us on our morning moves through the Crypto Twitterverse…

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