Exciting Crypto Trend, Shrimp and Crab Feast on Bitcoins as Many Whales Sell Them

Bitcoin pass remains nude for shrimp and crabs. (photo: screenshot of coingecko)

JAKARTA - Some non-whale Bitcoin investors (not large owners) seem to have no problem with the cryptocurrency bear market trend as well as the fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) surrounding the fall of the FTX exchange.

According to on-chain data, smaller retail investors have turned increasingly bullish on Bitcoin and are starting to accumulate more BTC despite the ongoing market meltdown. This appears in a report released by the blockchain intelligence platform Glassnode on November 27.

According to that data, there are at least two types of Bitcoin retail investors who have amassed record amounts of BTC after the collapse of FTX.

The first type of investor, which is classified as shrimp, defines entities or investors who own less than 1 Bitcoin, 16,500 US dollars at the time of writing. While the second type, crab, is a category of crypto addresses holding up to 10 BTC, 165,000 US dollars at the time of writing.

“Shrimp” investors have reportedly added 96,200 BTC ($1.6 billion) to their portfolios after the FTX crash in early November. It was the "highest balance increase of all time."

According to Glassnode, these types of investors collectively hold 1.21 million BTC, or $20 billion at the time of writing, which is equivalent to 6.3% of the currently circulating supply of 19.2 million coins.

Meanwhile, “crabs” have bought around 191,600 BTC, or $3.1 billion, over the past 30 days, which is also a “convincing all-time high,” analysts said.

According to the data, this new milestone has broken the previous highest BTC accumulation recorded by the crab in July 2022 at a peak of 126,000 BTC, or 2 billion US dollars bought per month.

While crabs and prawns have amassed record amounts of Bitcoin, big Bitcoin investors have sold them instead. According to Glassnode, Whale Bitcoin has released around 6,500 BTC, or $107 million, to exchanges over the past month, which remains a very small portion of their total holding of 6.3 million BTC, $104 billion.

The behavior of the shrimp and crab seems interesting given recent industry events, with the Sam Bankman-Fried crypto exchange being the subject of a massive industry scandal involving alleged fraud and misappropriation of funds.

On the other hand, some big Bitcoin investors claim to remain bullish on Bitcoin despite the ongoing crisis, as the government of El Salvador started buying BTC every day, starting from November 17th.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk also expressed confidence that Bitcoin “will do well” regardless of the industry's current problems, “But there could be a “long crypto winter”, Musk said.

After the FTX crash, Bitcoin immediately lost around $6,000 in value, plummeting from around $21,000 per coin to below 16,000 per coin in mid-November. However, the cryptocurrency has recovered somewhat over the last few weeks, rising to no more than 17,000 US dollars per coin.

According to data from CoinGecko, at the time of writing, BTC is trading at $16,500 per coin, or up about 1.7% over the last 24 hours.