The regulatory nod for a Bitcoin ETF has created a catalyst for growth, enabling greater mainstream adoption and surging progress in the cryptocurrency space.
According to data from IntoTheBlock, Bitcoin addresses with over 1k BTC holdings, otherwise known as Bitcoin Whales, have increased their holdings by 250k BTC following the launch of Bitcoin spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
At press time, Coingecko data valued BTC at $71k, causing the collective whale address holdings to surpass $10 billion in worth.
The increase in the accumulation of BTC holdings by whale addresses has brought the cryptocurrency back close to its former level prior to the FTX crash. FTX is a Bahamas-based cryptocurrency exchange with more than one million users and a trading volume of over $10 billion.
On November 11, 2022, the company filed for bankruptcy, and its founder and CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, resigned. Although Bankman-Fried was arrested and charged to court, the company’s collapse left a significant mark on the crypto space as BTC fell to as low as $20k and Solana dipped 5% for a day due to the closing of users’ accounts on the FTX platform.
Institutional Adoption Of Bitcoin Increases
The FTX collapse, coupled with the exit of key players like Genesis and 3AC, contributed to a downturn in crypto. However, IntoTheBlock reports that traditional finance institutions are aggressively entering the space.
The report read, “Now traditional finance entities have stepped in and accumulated sizable amounts of BTC since then. Many anticipated hedge funds would buy Bitcoin ETFs. This happened with institutions like Millenium Management buying as much as $2 billion.”
Another key player contributing to Bitcoin’s upsurge is the State of Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB). The investment board revealed its accumulated holdings of the popular Bitcoin ETFs BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBTC) and Grayscale’s GBTC in a 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
According to the filing, SWIB holds about 2,450,400 shares of IBTC and 1,013,000 shares of GBTC. Through the report, SWIB became the first state agency to disclose its spot BTC ETF holdings to the public.
