Bitcoin whales add 190,000 BTC as bear market nears late stage

Bitcoin whale holdings rose to 3.06 million BTC from 2.87 million in December, with accumulation accelerating after prices fell below $60,000 in June, CryptoQuant data shows.

"Rising whale balances into price weakness is the clearest smart-money tell," CryptoQuant said in its Smart Money report, adding that the pattern has historically preceded market bottoms.

Ethereum wallets holding 10,000 to 100,000 ETH collectively held a record 19.6 million ETH, while wallets above 100,000 ETH added roughly 1.8 million ETH since mid-2025. In XRP markets, average spot order sizes remained in CryptoQuant's "big whale" category as the token traded between $1 and $1.20, though a neutral 90-day taker cumulative volume delta suggested passive absorption rather than aggressive buying.

Bitcoin traded at $63,935 at the time of writing, above its realized price of $52,900. Ether traded at $1,858, below its realized price of about $2,450. XRP traded at roughly $1.10 compared with a realized price of about $0.75. The divergence between spot and realized prices across all three assets points to a market approaching its final capitulation phase.

Realized prices flag late-stage bear market

CryptoQuant's analysis comes as other researchers have also identified potential bottoming indicators. On Monday, 10x Research said Bitcoin could confirm a bear-market bottom with a monthly close above $63,000. K33 said in a July 7 report that Bitcoin has historically reached cycle lows within weeks after more than half of its circulating supply was held at a loss.

The realized price metric — an estimate of the market's average onchain cost basis — shows Bitcoin trading roughly 21 percent above its $52,900 realized price, while Ether sits about 24 percent below its $2,450 realized price. XRP trades about 47 percent above its $0.75 realized price. The mixed picture suggests the market has not yet fully priced in a bottom across all assets.

Whale timing precedes institutional flows

The accumulation pattern extends beyond CryptoQuant's data. Santiment figures show wallets holding 1,000 to 10,000 BTC lifted their share of supply from about 21.11 percent on July 23 to 21.25 percent by month-end, while the larger 10,000 to 100,000 BTC cohort turned back up to 11.25 percent after bottoming near 11.19 percent on July 27. Combined, the two cohorts added roughly 40,100 BTC, worth close to $2.6 billion.

US spot Bitcoin ETFs followed days later, posting $233.13 million in net inflows on July 30, with BlackRock's IBIT accounting for $183.4 million of the total. The sequence — whales first, then institutional flows — mirrors the pattern CryptoQuant identifies as a hallmark of late-cycle accumulation.

The convergence of whale accumulation, realized-price divergence, and ETF inflows comes as Bitcoin enters its historically weakest month. August carries a median return near negative 8 percent and has closed red for four straight years. Whether this marks accumulation before a bounce or a crowded bet into seasonal headwinds is the question the coming weeks will settle.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.