Bitcoin at ATH, but new ‘millionaire’ wallets are lagging — Kaiko

On-chain Bitcoin whales have had a slow return, despite Bitcoin surpassing its previous all-time high.

The number of new daily Bitcoin (BTC) “millionaire” wallets has increased to around 1,500 following the asset’s recent rally to $72,000 — though the uptick is still dwarfed by the number of new millionaires minted daily during the last bull run.

According to a March 11 report from Kaiko Research, the number of new daily million-dollar Bitcoin wallets was at a low of less than 500 in January but is now ticking closer to the 2,000 mark.

Kaiko, however, noted that during the last bull run — when Bitcoin set its previous all-time high of $69,000 on Nov. 10, 2021 — more than four thousand wallets reached the million-dollar mark daily, with another two thousand wallets reaching $10 million every day.

“Despite the recent price surge, on-chain bitcoin whales are seeing a slow return,” it noted.

In fact, the number of new daily Bitcoin millionaires now is similar to figures from July 2022 when Bitcoin plummeted below $20,000.

Kaiko attributed the “slow return” of new daily Bitcoin millionaire wallets to new capital not yet being deployed in “full force” and large whales potentially taking profits as Bitcoin hit new highs.

“In 2021, there was a huge influx in capital as all manner of bull sought to benefit from the crypto hype. This time around, whales could be taking a more cautious approach, waiting to see if the gains have legs before investing.”

Kaiko also said there could be more whales storing their holdings with custodians as opposed to personal wallets.

The launch of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) may have played a role here, as the nine new United States-based spot Bitcoin ETFs have accumulated more than $28 billion worth of Bitcoin since the ETFs launched in January, according to March 8 data from BitMEX Research.

Coinbase and BitGo are among the main custodians of the spot Bitcoin ETFs.

Rather than holding Bitcoin directly, investors in spot Bitcoin ETFs hold shares in the ETFs, which would mean their indirect Bitcoin holdings would not be reflected in this whale wallet data.

Related: Report suggests 6 billionaire crypto traders earned their fortunes from Bitcoin

Last year, the number of Bitcoin millionaire wallets skyrocketed nearly 300% to 90,000 across the year, according to cryptocurrency research firm Glassnode.

2023 marked a renaissance for Bitcoin “hodlers” — with the price increasing about 160% to $42,200.

Bitcoin has spiked a further 71% since then and is priced at $72,200 at the time of publication.