Despite being very intuitive and simple the aggregated balances by address size are notoriously difficult to interpret correctly.
Here are a few points one should be paying attention to while reading these charts.
1. An address does not equate to an entity, meaning that a single entity may break down its Bitcoin reserves into chunks and thus control a number of addresses. Linking those addresses together can only be done on a best effort basis, precise mapping isn't possible.
2. Some entities act as custodians holding Bitcoin for thousands of other individuals hidden behind a single address balance number. Examples of those are Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, CoinShares / XBT Provider, MicroStrategy, exchange wallets etc.
This fact alone makes the entire Humpbacks category a suspect for a group of such custodians. We usually ignore this band altogether in our analysis.
3. The separation between different balance categories is arbitrary. There is no statistical study suggesting that an entity's behaviour in the Sharks band is different from that in the Whales band.
The entire bitcoin supply is a closed system, e.g. Whales balance isn't growing/decreasing in a vacuum. When looking at the dynamics of a specific balance band one should pay attention to which other bands the balance is flowing from/to.
E.g. if the Whales balance spike coincides with the Sharks balance drop it may indicate a consolidation of sharks wallets or a small push/topup above the whales threshold in a number of sharks wallets.
1. An address does not equate to an entity, meaning that a single entity may break down its Bitcoin reserves into chunks and thus control a number of addresses. Linking those addresses together can only be done on a best effort basis, precise mapping isn't possible.
2. Some entities act as custodians holding Bitcoin for thousands of other individuals hidden behind a single address balance number. Examples of those are Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, CoinShares / XBT Provider, MicroStrategy, exchange wallets etc.
This fact alone makes the entire Humpbacks category a suspect for a group of such custodians. We usually ignore this band altogether in our analysis.
3. The separation between different balance categories is arbitrary. There is no statistical study suggesting that an entity's behaviour in the Sharks band is different from that in the Whales band.
The entire bitcoin supply is a closed system, e.g. Whales balance isn't growing/decreasing in a vacuum. When looking at the dynamics of a specific balance band one should pay attention to which other bands the balance is flowing from/to.
E.g. if the Whales balance spike coincides with the Sharks balance drop it may indicate a consolidation of sharks wallets or a small push/topup above the whales threshold in a number of sharks wallets.