Earlier this month I stumbled across an article discussing the idea that Bitcoin was about 6 months away from a sell-side liquidity crisis due to ETFs continuing to grow their BTC amount at a high rate. This article's information came from Ki Young Ju Founder and CEO of Cryptoquant an on-chain analytics platform. After seeing this article I made a note to come back in a few months and see how this prediction had shaken out however, it turns out I did not need to wait nearly that long.
Yesterday it came out that the supply of BTC on Coinbase had hit a 9-year low. With Coinbase playing such a large role in these ETFs and institutional investors overall it is a pretty significant development. Since I had only just a couple of weeks earlier read that the shortage was going to occur in 6 months I decided to go back to Ki Young Ju's X to see what he had posted since March 12. His posts and the data he provides make a ton of sense and are something I agree with. Recent price increases have not been driven by the halving event but rather by the Spot ETFs acquiring so much Bitcoin. In his posts, he mentions that the cost per coin to mine after halving will go up to $37k which is fine with BTC sitting at $69/70k.
One thing he pointed out that I was extremely interested in was the average price of BTC that new whales have paid compared to previous ones. Below is a graph that he posted to his X account
Graph from Ki Young Ju
These new whales' average is $56.4k compared to $21.3k for old whales. New whales also became whales I doubt anyone surprise via the Spot ETFs as well. Short-term whale holders are up 16% already in unrealized profit. This includes the Spot ETFs and results in an unrealized profit total of over $16.3 billion. This I think helps highlight how the Spot ETFs have affected the market. In the graphs below you can see the historical relation short-term whales have had to profit.
Graphs from Ki Young Ju
Thanks to just doing what I tend to do in the morning I was able to stumble across an article that led me to Ki Young Ju's X account. The information and data he has is something that fascinated me as it covers not only what is going on now but what is on the horizon. It will be extremely interesting to me to see how the halving affects the price of BTC and will we start to see more DeFi BTC or will Coinbase pump the price buy purchasing more BTC to replenish its coffers. Only time will tell!