After the sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, the number of Bitcoin whales has increased. Wallet addresses containing more than 1,000 BTC, corresponding to about $43 million, surged on Monday.
Coin Metrics data, noted by The Block, shows that wallets in this group rose 5% on February 28 to 2,226, which has not been seen since June 2021. Similarly, the number of addresses containing more than 100 BTC increased by 1.3% to reach 15,953. Block Research’s own data also revealed small but drastic increases in the number of wallets with Bitcoin balances of more than 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, 1 million and 10 million dollars.
The reason behind the increase is not exactly known. But many market commentators speculate that this may have been due to wealthy Russians seeking to protect their wealth in the face of sanctions. The CEO of popular DeFi platform Cake also said in a tweet on the subject that it may be related to the fact that a group of people with deep pockets suddenly realized that they had strong interests to get into Bitcoin.
Bitcoin, which has increased by about 13% in the last 24 hours, is trading at $ 43,187 as of the time of publication.
20732
