Bitcoin whales activity picking up but price can't break $48,000

Bitcoin is still trading below $48,000 on Thursday, the price where the rally of the last few days ran aground and where bulls saw the momentum that lifted the digital currency to 2022 highs reached on March 28th exhausted. Since then, the cryptocurrency has entered a short-term consolidation. It remains to be seen if it is just a short break before assaulting resistance at $50,000 - $52,000. Market watchers draw attention to Bitcoin whale activity in the last 48 hours, whose transactions have seen a spike.

Whale Alert, a well-known blockchain monitoring and analytics platform, recently highlighted a Bitcoin (BTC) transfer worth nearly $190 million. As the firm advises, a cryptocurrency moved 4,000 Bitcoins from the Gemini digital platform to Coinbase on March 29th. This is one of the largest movements of Bitcoin whales in the last 48 hours.

Bitcoin transactions worth at least $100,000 have increased significantly in recent days as well. Specifically, on March 30th, more than 3,000 such transfers were executed in a 4-hour period, the most transactions of this sort made since March 1st, as analyst firm, Santiment, noted.

Whale Alert also highlighted the activation of a dormant Bitcoin account after more than 7 years. "A dormant BTC address containing 1,000 coins (USD 47,546,005) was just activated after 7.7 years (worth USD 583,859 in 2014)," the company stated.

Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th, Bitcoin addresses holding 1,000 to 10,000 tokens, so-called 'whales', have skyrocketed 9%, according to data from blockchain analytics platform Santiment. These are wallets holding hundreds of thousands of dollars of the crypto queen, that continue to buy tokens at current prices.

Currently, there are more than 2,200 addresses holding 1,000 to 10,000 BTC, the highest level in 12 months. This phase of whale accumulation is usually followed by immense price momentum.