Cryptocurrency whales are individuals or entities that own very large amounts of a specific cryptocurrency, allowing them to influence the market when making large buy or sell transactions.
Key points to understand cryptocurrency whales:
🐋 Who are the whales?
Early investors in currencies (like Bitcoin or Ethereum).
Large investment funds (like Grayscale, MicroStrategy).
Trading platforms (like Binance, Coinbase).
The founders of cryptocurrency projects themselves (for example, Ripple founders own large amounts of XRP).
Large individual investors (sometimes called "individual whales").
📊 How much should you own to be considered a "whale"?
In Bitcoin, for example: those who own more than 1,000 BTC are often classified as whales.
In smaller coins, a person can be considered a whale if they own a significant percentage of the total supply (5% or more, for example).
💥 Why are they important?
Their large trades can cause massive price fluctuations.
Sometimes they raise prices (pumping) through massive purchases.
And sometimes they cause a crash (dumping) during sudden sales.
🧠 How do whales typically behave?
They do not always trade in the open market, but rather through over-the-counter (OTC) deals to avoid direct impact.
They exploit market analysis and liquidity maps to identify the best entry and exit points.
They monitor the behavior of small traders and psychologically exploit it (such as moving the price to incite panic or greed).
🔍 How can whale activity be monitored?
Through large wallet tracking tools like:
Whale Alert (on Twitter or through their website)
Lookonchain
Santiment
Arkham Intelligence
By monitoring large transfers on the blockchain (for example, from a private wallet to a trading platform = intention to sell).
⚠️ Risks of dealing in a whale-controlled market:
Manipulation: They can move the market in a certain direction to deceive traders.
Instability: If a whale suddenly decides to sell a huge amount, prices can collapse quickly.
Artificial FOMO or FUD: They can spread rumors or false signals to profit from crowd movements.
