Bitcoin whale numbers hit record high

The number of Bitcoin “whales” has reached an all-time high today, according to data from metrics site Glassnode.

Whales are such wealthy investors that the trades they engage in can drive prices up or down. Glassnode defines Bitcoin whales as entities (people or organizations that Glassnode thinks own a bunch of wallets) that contain at least 1,000 Bitcoin, currently worth $ 19 million.

Per Glassnode, there are just under 2,000 Bitcoin whales, to date. The last time there were so many whales was in June 2016, a year before the 2017 Bitcoin bull run.

Earlier this week, a report from analysis firm Bitcoin Santiment found that the number of wallets containing at least 10,000 BTC was also at its highest annual level.

Bitcoin fanatics have long clamored for institutional investors and whales. Their battle cry is, of course, inexhaustible: who determines when institutional investors have finally arrived?

As the tears continued, institutions and wealthy investors responded one by one.

Billionaire investors love Stanley printmiller and Ricardo Salinas Pliego are among the main investors in Bitcoin. MicroStrategy bought $ 450 million in Bitcoin this summer. Its CEO, Michael Saylor, sees Bitcoin as “a swarm of cyber hornets in the service of the goddess of wisdom.”

And big companies are now offering Bitcoin to their customers. PayPal recently rolled out crypto services for U.S. customers, Robinhood offers commission-free crypto trading, and Square’s Cash App sells cryptocurrencies to its users.

To serve their growing customers, big institutions like Grayscale (a crypto investment firm), Square, and PayPal are all buying new Bitcoin to make sure their customers have a sufficient supply.

But if a small number of companies hold the bulk of Bitcoin, the distributed network could become a bit too heavy.