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Crypto Terms:  Letter W
Jul 07, 2023 |
updated: Apr 16, 2024

What is Whale?

Whale Meaning:
Whale - a person who has big amounts of cryptocurrencies and can influence the market prices either by buying or selling them.
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Let's find out Whale meaning, definition in crypto, what is Whale, and all other detailed facts.

A whale is a person who has a huge number of cryptocurrencies and can highly influence market prices. Also, whales are a part of a special group of people and organizations who hold enough cryptocurrency to move their spot price on the market. They are the opposite of cryptocurrency fishes (or minnows) who hold insignificant amounts of cryptocurrency.

There is no clear minimum threshold for whales, however, others believe that a Bitcoin whale must have at least 1,000 BTC. The Pareto Principle states that the top 20% of Bitcoin owners control more than 80% of the currency's value. Usually, the identities of Bitcoin whales remain anonymous.

The industry's greatest Bitcoin whales include Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, as well as Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, co-founders of the Gemini exchange. Besides them, Tesla and Microstrategy feature heavily on the list from an institutional perspective since they hold hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin.

Even though a whale is usually a wealthy individual, the word can also refer to an entity or organization that has a considerable amount of cryptocurrencies and the potential to drive the market up or down.

Bitcoin whales are notorious for establishing speculative patterns that Bitcoin fish follow. This frequently results in a reoccurring cycle in which BTC principles get separated from the primary determinants of cryptocurrency markets.

Craig Wright, an Australian businessman, was prosecuted in 2019 for supposedly possessing more than 1.1 million BTC. A while back, Craig Wright was originally thought to be the one hiding behind the identity of the enigmatic Satoshi Nakamoto. Therefore, transfers of large quantities of BTC, particularly from outdated cryptocurrency wallets, frequently lead to a belief that Satoshi Nakamoto is still around.