In a recent report by the blockchain analytics company Chainalysis, one-third of the entire Ether (ETH) cryptocurrency is owned merely by 376 people, as per the research published on 15 May. But despite holding a large proportion of ETH’s circulating supply, the study also revealed how this segment is responsible for only 7% of all transaction activity.
According to the report, about 60% of these “whales” only sit on their assets and don’t regularly trade with exchanges.
Concluding from these statistics, Chainalysis found that although these individuals don’t necessarily guide ETH’s prices and the fluctuations, but they do contribute significantly to the market volatility during big sell-offs.
In a similar report back in 2016, this segment was believed to own a whopping 47% of ETH’s circulating supply, so the current report certainly shows a move towards improvement. The report also analyzed the activity from 2016 to 2019 and revealed that ether prices mimicked similar trends as bitcoin (BTC.) Researchers added:
“On average, a 1% increase in bitcoin prices yesterday leads to a 1.1% increase in ether prices today.”
In summary, the company concluded that questions and concerns about the manipulating power whales on market prices might have been previously overstated, but also added:
“We cannot rule out the possibility that whales can impact price changes within single days based on outlier events.”
Chainalysis has made a name for itself through these types of reports, a similar one released last month where the company revealed that at least 95% of crypto crimes involve BTC. Their analytics collection and analysis faculties have also been recently reinforced courtesy the addition of real-time transaction monitoring tools covering 10 cryptocurrencies in response to demand from law enforcement agencies.
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