Key Takeaways
- Cryptoquant data shows whales bought roughly 43,000 BTC, worth $2.75 billion, in 60 days.
- Buying resumed once bitcoin fell to about $60,000, reversing months of whale selling.
- August spot trading volume has dropped to its lowest level since August 2021.
Whales Reverse Course After Months of Selling
Large bitcoin holders, wallets that exclude exchanges and mining pools, added approximately 43,000 BTC over the past 60 days, a haul valued at roughly $2.9 billion. Either way, the accumulation marks a clear reversal after months in which the same cohort had been net sellers, pressuring bitcoin’s price throughout the back half of its slide from October 2025’s all-time high.
The renewed buying began once bitcoin dropped to around $60,000, a level that appears to have drawn in large holders who had been sitting on the sidelines during the steepest part of the decline. Bitcoin has since climbed back toward $65,000 and has spent recent weeks trading in a tighter $62,000 to $65,000 band.
It Isn’t Just the Biggest Wallets
The recovery in demand wasn’t limited to the largest holders, as balances among so-called dolphins, a Cryptoquant classification for holders with meaningfully sized but sub-whale balances, also grew over the same period, suggesting the shift toward accumulation is broader than a handful of mega-wallets making opportunistic buys.
That pattern mirrors an earlier stretch this year when Bitcoin.com News reported that whales had “quietly bought” a prior dip near $60,000, pushing the exchange whale ratio (a measure of how much whale activity is flowing onto exchanges) to 61.6% at the time.
Notably, the accumulation trend is playing out against thinning overall market activity as August’s spot trading volumes have fallen to their lowest monthly level since August 2021, meaning the 43,000 BTC added by large holders represents an outsized share of total market activity compared to a more liquid environment.
Thin volume can amplify the price impact of concentrated buying, which may partly explain why bitcoin has found more stable footing in recent weeks even without a dramatic shift in broader sentiment.
A Reversal From Earlier in 2026
The renewed whale accumulation stands in contrast to selling that dominated bitcoin’s ownership data for much of this year. Strategy, for instance, has sold a portion of its holdings four times this year already alongside other major players like Riot, MARA, etc, who have done the same.
Against that backdrop, a broad cohort of large holders stepping back in to buy roughly 43,000 BTC over just 60-days is quite notable. In fact, earlier this year, there was a stretch where investors accumulated 270,000 BTC over 30 days, marking the most aggressive buying streak since 2013.
Similarly, there was another period where large holders added 66,700 BTC even as mid-sized wallets sold into weakness. Each of those episodes preceded meaningful price recoveries, though past accumulation patterns are not a guarantee of what comes next.
Looking ahead, the key variable to watch is whether whale buying persists as bitcoin approaches the upper end of its recent $62,000 to $65,000 range.
