Chainalysis Data Suggests One Third of Ether’s Total Circulation Supply is Held By Just 376 People

By Prashant Jha

Chainalysis is a blockchain and the crypto analytic focused startup has revealed that 33% of the total circulating supply of Ether is held by only 376 people. However, Chainalysis also confirmed that 376 Ether whales have no impact on the prices of ETH.

In comparison, 20% of the total circulating supply of Bitcoin is held by 448 whales. Although the ETH whales do not really impact the market pricing since the majority of them are not active traders as they are just holding on to their funds, but since they own a ton of ETH, their trading activities sure boost the intraday volatility in the market, given the amount they trade.

Another interesting revelation made by Chainalysis suggests that the vector autoregression (VAR) model they use point towards similarity in price movement of BTC and ETH. ETH prices follow the prices of Bitcoin. Chainalysis report notes,

“These preliminary findings are consistent with the literature on stock market prices and volatility. Academics have found that large anomalous fluctuations in traded volumes of particular stocks, notably the S&P 500, tend to impact volatility and not price levels.”

Kim Grauer, a senior economist at Chainalysis is planning to turn her research into an academic paper which would analyze the effect of the whales holding large sums of ETH and its impact on the market. She said,

“We’re excited to bring the models that have been applied to the stock market to cryptocurrencies. It’s unfortunate this bull run didn’t happen a month ago to be part of our analysis.”

Chainlysis is one of the most trusted and recognized brands for analyzing various crypto market movements and providing insightful data on various cryptocurrencies.

Final Thoughts

Cryptocurrency markets are considered to be one of the most volatile ones, where the price movements are often triggered by whales pumping and dumping their assets onto the market to drive the prices as per their liking. However, it is interesting to note that ETH whales do not really have any impact on the prices of ETH, which for sure is a sign of maturing markets.