Ethereum: What the top holders’ wallets tell you about ETH’s future

• The top 10 ETH holders have a combined balance of $51.6 billion.
•  Long-term holders are committed to not selling.

Five years ago, the top 10 Ethereum [ETH] exchange and non-exchange addresses owned about 11.2% of the total supply. But now, the top holders have extended their reach in the distribution of the altcoin king, Santiment revealed.

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Preparing the table in the presence of doubts

According to Santiment, the top 10 addresses now account for 34.6% of the total ETH supply. These coins are valued at $51.6 billion, representing 27.86 million ETH.

? #Ethereum has been seeing its top 10 addresses expand and accumulate more and more of the total available coin supply. In 5 years, the top 10 largest addresses have gone from owning 11.2% to now 34.6% of $ETH. The 27.86M $ETH added is worth $51.6B. ? https://t.co/utI8W6DkRX pic.twitter.com/klgb7pus7K

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) August 9, 2023

As of March 2022, the on-chain analytic platform reported that the cohort holding increased by 4.3% from 2021. This increase ensured that the supply jumped to 23.7%. 

So, the staggering jump this year implies that whales’ conviction that ETH would be largely profitable in the near term may have increased. But was it the same case with the retail brigade?

Well, Santiment’s data showed that the situation was not the same. Based on the information accessed at press time, the balance of addresses holding between 0.1 and 100 coins has been decreasing.

Although the total supply grabbed by this cohort did not sum up to 10%, the fall in balance suggests that most retail holders have been selling a notable part of their holdings.

Source: Santiment

The disparity in accumulation between whales and retail also implies that the sentiment toward the long-term value diverged. 

Still not getting rid of ETH 

However, the holding dominance by whales does not infer that ETH might not face a decrease in the short term. This was because the open interest in exchanges was at a considerably high level.

Open interest keeps track of every open position in a particular contract rather than tracking the total volume traded. 

High open interest usually indicates an increase in liquidity for a contract. This generally means that there is only a slight discrepancy between the market price and the price set on the contract. Hence, open long and short positions could be substantial.

Furthermore, the realized market cap HODL waves were down to 1.307. Similar to the regular HODL waves, the realized Cap HODL waves chart shows how an asset’s supply is distributed across various coin age bands.

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One can also explain the metric as a measure of the combined USD values of all coins when they were transferred to or purchased by a new owner from a previous one.

Source: Santiment

Therefore, the decrease in ETH’s realized cap HODL waves implies that the majority of the coin owners are not likely to sell. Thus, many may continue holding for a long time.