Bitcoin and Ethereum fell hard on Friday. Other cryptocurrencies followed suit. The collapse of Silvergate and a new US tax proposal on crypto mining led to losses among the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap. Stocks were also weakened by expectations for higher-than-expected interest rates and pressure from a tighter US labor market. Meanwhile, whales, big investors in the cryptocurrency space, took action. Here are the details…
Bitcoin and altcoins crash: Whales focus on them
As we have reported as Kriptokoin.com, the crypto money market has entered a sharp correction and has seen a loss of approximately $ 70 billion in the last 24 hours. Amid this development, some altcoins are showing strong whale activity. Bitcoin price fell sharply below $20,000. Some market analysts believe that BTC has the potential to correct up to $15,000 if the selling pressure continues. Apart from Bitcoin, altcoins also entered a pretty solid correction.
Other altcoins such as Ethereum (ETH), Polygon (MATIC), Dogecoin (DOGE), Solana (SOL), Litecoin (LTC) corrected over 5 percent. Dogecoin was the worst performer of the top 10, down 8.58 percent, followed by the Shiba Inu with 8.09 percent. Global crypto market cap has dropped 6.62 percent in the last 24 hours to $928.9 billion, while total crypto market volumes have increased by 60.53 percent to $69.37 billion.
During such a decline, large whale movements hunting for altcoins have drawn attention. According to the data, three altcoins in particular: Polygon (MATIC), Phantom (FTM), and Aavegotchi (GHST) have seen solid moves recently. A total of 58,885,143 MATICs ($62.1 million) were traded by whales on Thursday, March 9.
Whale movements can lower the price
However, on-chain data provider Santiment reported that these are “an exchange address that moves coins to another exchange address.” Therefore, there are no significant positive indicators here. According to Santiment, “Usually, this type of transfer reflects a whale sale at worst, or a routine move to another exchange address at best.”
Phantom (FTM), another altcoin in the focus of whales, fell 40 percent after a strong start to 2023. Santiment said Fantom’s “last major transaction was a $10.2 million move on an exchange. So far, the price has dropped after this massive transfer of funds,” he said. On the other hand, Aavegotchi (GHST) witnessed extreme price fluctuations from whale trades, which had a huge impact on the price. According to Santiment, a whale transferred $8.2 million in GHST today to another exchange address in a single transfer.
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