Recent data from Chainalysis — a blockchain research company, as published in Financial Times shows that the amount of Bitcoin owned by long-term investors is now almost equaled by speculators, reports Cointelegraph.
Day trading has increased since the end of last year and the amount held by this group is thought to have risen to 5.1 million BTC according to the report compared to 6 million BTC held by investors hanging on in for the long-term, that is over a period of one year.
It appears, according to the Financial Times, that Bitcoin volumes have fallen in tandem to prices, from $4 billion daily in December to $1 billion today. It’s thought this may be a feature in Bitcoins decline in price, Chainalysis chief economist Philip Gradwell suggests. He estimates that longer-term holders sold at least $30 billion worth of bitcoin to new speculators over the December to April period, with half of this movement taking place in December alone.
Another feature of the current situation shown by the data is the imbalance of wealth distribution of the digital currency, that is small numbers of investors holding a vast amount of the cryptocurrency. Of the roughly 17 million Bitcoin available, the data show that, as of April 2018, around 1,600 Bitcoin wallets hold at least 1,000 bitcoins each, equalling almost 5 million BTC and accounting for almost a third of all Bitcoin in circulation.
Six months after its peak, bitcoin remains the most popular cryptocurrency, though its price has fallen to about $7,650 at the time of publication. It follows that for each of the bitcoin millionaires there are numerous casualties that came into cryptocurrency too late, unlike those who established themselves early and reaped the benefits.
One of these is a 39-year-old who has made enough money from trading digital currencies over 5 years to pay off his mortgage, buy a Mercedes and now swap office life for managing his remaining crypto investments full-time, writes The Irish Times.
“It was very euphoric…It’s been life-changing for me at this point,” says the California-based father of two, who has a cult-like Twitter following under the pen name ‘bitcoin Dad’.
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