How Crypto Whale Activity Offers Hope for Bitcoin and Broader Market Recovery After Post-Christmas Dip

A recent campaign of large stablecoin deposits by whales triggers hope of a Bitcoin and broader market recovery following the latest pullback.

The crypto markets have shown signs of uncertainty in recent weeks following the Federal Reserve’s hawkish posture heading into 2025. While the market offered hopes of a recovery with a Christmas Day rally, an ensuing sharp correction on Boxing Day again stirred doubts. 

Amid the uncertainty, leading crypto analytics platform Santiment Feed has argued that there is hope to be found in the activity of a closely watched class of crypto investors.

Whales Preparing to Accumulate?

On Christmas day, December 25, 2024, Bitcoin rallied to $99,900 amid a 7% jump from Christmas Eve lows of $93,500 amid a Fed-led slump. But any hopes that a recovery from the recent market slump was underway were likely short-lived.

Notably, on Boxing Day, December 26, the asset shed most of its Christmas gains to trade as low as $95,000, dragging the broader crypto market down with it. Despite the wild swings, Santiment Feed has maintained that the crypto market still has bullish undercurrents, citing whale activity.

In an X post on Friday, December 27, the firm noted that this class of crypto investors with extensive holdings were increasingly moving stablecoins to exchanges following the most recent dip, per its top centralized exchange deposit dashboard, presumably to load up on more crypto assets.

Santiment Feed noted that in the past 24 hours alone, there had been at least seven such deposits worth over $9 million, with the highest carrying a value of $50 million.

The firm argued that while some of these deposits are likely aimed towards farming a new Binance Launchpool token BIO Protocol (BIO), the dominance of such large stablecoin transactions on the dashboard boded well for the crypto market regardless.

“it’s a strong sign that whales are gearing up for some purchasing, which can push up prices market-wide,” Santiment wrote, even though it is unclear when these whales intend to start making these purchases.

Still, Santiment Feed’s recent statements align with CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju’s opinion that the crypto bull market is still on.

Billions Flowing into the Market

On Thursday, Young Ju argued that the crypto bull market was still on despite recent uncertainty. The analyst expressed this view, citing capital inflows into the market.

Young Ju stressed that while news of whale accumulation may no longer send shockwaves through the crypto space as they did two to three years ago, the moves offered confirmation that the market was not yet in a bubble.

He contended that a bubble is when prices are significantly higher than the capital flowing into a market. On the contrary, he noted that $7 billion poured into crypto markets weekly, citing on-chain data.

The CryptoQuant Chief further asserted that Bitcoin appeared far from its cycle top, pointing to the asset’s “true” market value to realized value (MVRV) ratio.

The true MVRV chart shared by Young Ju measures the deviation between Bitcoin’s market value and the realized value, which is the average price at which coins were last moved, excluding coins thought to have been lost for more than seven years.

Like the standard MVRV, the metric is used to measure extremes in Bitcoin’s price, often called market tops and bottoms. The chart shared by Young Ju places the MVRV at 1.8, which is considered to be healthy and not overheated.