Bitcoin Rally in October Driven Largely by Whales, Analyst Claims

Bitcoin is approaching its all-time high and demand for the cryptocurrency has jumped dramatically for bullish contracts across crypto exchanges. The world's most popular cryptocurrency, at the time of writing, is trading at $61,089 (roughly Rs. 45,96,677) on Coinbase, taking October's rally to over 40 percent. An analyst has now opined that the current Bitcoin rally has been driven by whales and that short liquidations are yet to make a major splash.

Ki Young Ju, the CEO of CryptoQuant — a well-known South-Korea based data analytics and research company — tweeted stating that Bitcoin prices lately have been driven by whales buying large amounts of the cryptocurrency through derivatives. This is a marked shift from what the trend has been over the past few months. Since BTC's crash back in May, Bitcoin bulls have been hesitant to buy big and shift focus temporarily to other assets like non-fungible tokens.

In the crypto-world, a 'short squeeze' is an event where the price of an asset skyrockets over a short period of time as leveraged short positions get liquidated or, as the phrase suggests, 'squeezed'. This creates a snowball effect where the higher the price goes, the more shorts get wiped off, boosting the price further. On the other hand, whales are basically majority asset holders, whose movements and dealings have a marked impact on the market.

According to the latest data published by Santiment, Large Bitcoin addresses holding between 100 and 1,000 coins have shot by approximately 2 percent in the last month. "254 more of these whale addresses now exist compared to five weeks ago, which is a notable 1.9 percent increase in this short time period,” Santiment mentioned in a recent Tweet, shedding more light on the increased amount of whale activity as Bitcoin prices surge.