Trading in the cryptocurrency market requires technical analysis skills and fundamental details of how the market works. For the latter, it about understanding the movement of money and how it impacts you as a trader; one way of conducting this fundamental practice is through using crypto whale wallet trackers that give a footprint of money movement in the market.
A crypto whale wallet tracker is a tool that lets traders and investors track how crypto whales—individuals or organizations that own a high percentage of a cryptocurrency—move and spend their crypto alongside other valuable information.
Understanding how to use a crypto whale wallet tracker keeps traders and investors ahead of the game by spotting opportunities quicker than before, which can yield a positive return on investment.
What Is A Crypto Whale Wallet Tracker
To understand and grasp how a crypto whale wallet tracker works, it’s essential to know who crypto whales are.
Crypto whales are individuals or groups that control a large percentage of the total supply of a token or coin in the cryptocurrency market. They’re also known as the big guys. Ideally, to qualify as a crypto whale, the investor needs to own at least 10% or more of a token because owning this amount means the investor is capable of causing a steer in the market.
Consider the effect of an individual or entity owning 10% of the total supply of cryptocurrencies like Ether, Matic, XRP, BNB, LTC, or ADA outside the core team of the blockchain; this will lead to fluctuation in the market price of these tokens and might trample on the market’s decentralized nature. Hence, removing trust and transparency as one would expect. MicroStrategy (MSTR), a software company, is a Bitcoin whale with 140,000 BTC holding.
Note: this isn’t up to 10% of the total supply (21 million) of Bitcoin, but it’s a significant number owned by an entity.
However, the presence of whales in the crypto market is partially inevitable, and tools like crypto whale wallet trackers are used to monitor them.
Crypto whale wallet trackers are the tools traders and investors use to track how these whales are moving their funds so they can be a step ahead and not get caught off guard by volatile and unexpected pumps or dumps in the value or price of tokens.
Check out this detailed explanation of the volatility in the cryptocurrency market for a deeper understanding.
Why Study A Crypto Whale
Generally, the main reason behind tracking a crypto whale’s movement is to increase profitability and minimize losses as a trader or investor.
A crypto whale’s decision to stack up or buy more of crypto can increase the coin’s price significantly in value, which can be temporary. Also, when they decide to sell off a massive percentage of their cryptocurrency holdings, it might cause a decline in the value of the token sold off.
Being a crypto whale isn’t restricted to influencing cryptocurrency price movements; it also means tending to influence people’s —market participants’—decisions. Market participants tend to follow suit when a whale buys or sells a cryptocurrency.
An example was the 30% spike in Dogecoin’s price after Twitter changed its logo to a Doge symbol.
Whales can’t be underestimated; this is why understanding their movements and anticipating them ahead or tracking them in real time can lead to more profit for traders and investors.
Whale Tracker doesn’t focus on smaller-sized cryptocurrency holders because they don’t possess the capacity to affect the market as the whales do, and more often than not, these groups tend to react and follow the direction the whales decide to move.
Investors and traders are willing to make huge bucks from trading the crypto markets need to take this tool seriously as an indicator similar to an economic calendar they might be using.
How To Track A Crypto Whale Wallet
Different approaches or paths exist to track whales’ movement and activities across different tokens or crypto, starting from onchain analysis.
Onchain Analysis
This is the approach taken to understand and be in sync with the activities of whales in the market. Onchain analysis means studying the blockchain to review the transactions happening on the chain—hence the name. Onchain analysis is possible because of the decentralized and transparent nature of the blockchain.
By studying blocks of transactions, investors can get details that matter to them, such as the size of transactions, amount transacted, and wallet addresses involved. If the transaction is considered significant, then studying the wallet address of whoever initiated such a transaction will give more details, such as the number of tokens held by such an individual or entity; if it’s tremendous, that’s worth millions of dollars, then the said address is owned by a crypto whale.
There are four important criteria you want to watch out for in this scenario, which includes:
Wallet-to-Exchange Transaction:
This refers to whether the transaction of the token or cryptocurrency is from a wallet to an exchange. In this case, it signifies a potential dump or pump of the token.
Wallets are usually used to store cryptocurrencies and tokens not for immediate use. This is because of the higher level of security and self-custody feature associated with wallets, unlike exchanges that tend to fail. Also, the wallet has limited features, such as buying and selling tokens into the market. Consider this as moving funds from a saving app to a banking app where the funds will be spent.
Like the example above, in most cases, the movement of cryptocurrency from a wallet to an exchange simply Indicates that the whales intend to sell off, indicating an incoming dump. In the case of a stablecoin, it suggests the opposite.
🚨 🚨 🚨 55,000,000 #USDT (55,029,274 USD) transferred from Tether Treasury to #Bitfinexhttps://t.co/rfx3jZtakx
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) June 21, 2023Exchange-to-Wallet Transactions
The case of exchange-to-wallets transactions is entirely different. This situation occurs when whales withdraw their funds from an exchange into a wallet, reducing the supply of the tokens or crypto in the market. With a decrease in supply, there will be a scarcity of the cryptocurrency or token, and the prices of the assets grow as demand weighs in.
If a stablecoin is moved from an exchange to a wallet, it isn’t a good signal, and it causes a slight drop in the market value of such stablecoin; however, it tends to regain balance in its pegged value in a short time. As a trader, you can take this as a cue, coupled with other factors, to trade the market.
Wallet-to-Wallet Transaction
This type of transaction typically doesn’t indicate or have any form of negative or positive sentiment attached to it; in a situation where this occurs, it simply can indicate a whale diversifying accounts where their assets are held. This comes with little to no risk.
Exchange-to-Exchange transaction
Although not entirely popularized, a huge transfer of tokens or cryptocurrencies from one exchange to another by a whale can indicate that the exchange might fail or for other reasons, such as accessing a wider range of features available on the new exchange.
If the former is the case, it can be an excellent reason to consider switching away from the initial exchange if you use it. A good example was before the crash of the FTX exchange, where certain whales already moved their assets to other exchanges to avoid losing to the market.
How Does A Crypto Whale Wallet Tracker Function
Crypto whale trackers are block explorers that depend on the data stored in the blockchain. The blockchain is a chain of blocks connected chronologically that contains transaction information.
Learn more about blocks and block confirmation in this article.
This information is stored in binary format or as a combination of letters and words—transaction hash—which are less interactive to humans. It’s the work of the crypto whale wallet tracker to analyze the data and convert them into a readable format —words and numbers —for investors to engage with and get the information needed.
Advantages And Disadvantages of A crypto Whale Wallet Tracker
Just as with any other crypto-dedicated tools, crypto whale wallet trackers have their advantages and disadvantages that come from using them.
Advantages of a Crypto Whale Wallet Tracker
Saves time: One of the primary benefits of using a crypto whale wallet tracker is that it saves users time since it analyzes and reports in readable and understandable formats, making users focus on other parts of their trading.
Better Informed Decision: while the whale tracker reports its discovery, users can easily combine that with other data from their end to make smarter decisions since they don’t have to deal with a chunk of information. Now you can decide and know when to buy or sell a cryptocurrency.
Simplified Data: Unlike having to go through a manual process of understanding the data and different languages of the blockchain, the crypto whale wallet converts these sets of information into understandable formats like words and charts for users.
Disadvantages of a Crypto Whale Wallet Tracker
False signals: due to a whale’s massive budget, they can make certain decisions that might trick other traders into buying or selling. For example, buying to sell or selling to buy back a crypto asset in a very short time.
Cost: running and using a fully developed whale tracking system are on the high side, which can be out of budget for interested users.
Single Indicator: this is a critical problem with using a crypto whale tracker; it becomes easy for users to use that as a single indicator for taking trades. However, it shouldn’t; users need to combine other data, such as technical analysis.
3 Crypto Whale Wallet Tracker To Consider Using
Users can use different whale tracking tools, each with its own pros and cons; however, we’ve highlighted some of the most popular crypto whale tracking tools among investors and traders.
Whale Alert
This most popular crypto whale wallet tracking app offers users a wide selection to track and analyze whales’ transactions across multiple blockchains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Polygon, and Dogecoin.
Whale Alert’s tracking and monitoring tool has acquired over 500,000 users since its launch and is the world’s largest crypto whale wallet tracker. Its Twitter page has millions of followers and shares daily whale trades. Its services include tracking transaction data, price data, transaction types, address types, and attribution with histories.
Whale Alert offers freemium and premium services to its clients. The freemium package has limited features. The premium package comes in four different annual plans: developer, enterprise, institutional, and historical, with pricing ranging from $49, $699, $1499, and $1990, respectively.
ClankApp
ClankApp is another leading blockchain whale wallet tracker investors have a liking for. Its tracking and monitoring services across the blockchains are entirely free, and anyone can access their API services. However, it has a donation link, and Blockchair powers it.
It has a very interactive website, compared to Whale Alert, and its tracking services are currently available across 24 blockchains, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Cosmos, Stellar, and Binance Chain. Other services include email alerts and exchange analytics.
ClankApp has thousands of followers across its social media page and is available in English and French. It’s a great tool for investors or traders who are on a budget.
DeBank
DeBank is a web3 portfolio tracker for players in the DeFi space. Like other crypto whale wallet trackers, it gives detailed insights into what whales in the DeFi arena are doing with their funds. DeBank is a go-to choice for its users because it also tracks transactions on non-fungible tokens (NFTs). It also supports the largest DeFi chains and protocols, allowing users to observe a wide range of selections.
In addition, DeBank hosts a wide range of features that keep users glued to its platform, including its Web3 messaging feature that connects and allows different web3 users and founders to communicate. The not-so-appealing part about DeBank is that its landing page needs more details about the brand, such as testimonials, proof of work, more information about the company, or links to its social media handles.
Other Crypto Whale Tracking Tools
There are other popular whale wallet tracking tools available at traders’ and investors’ disposal; some of them include Etherscan, Dex check, WhaleBot Alert, Polygon Scan, Whalemap, Cryptocurrency Alerting, Nansen, Whale Watchers, and Candlestick.
Conclusion
Crypto whale wallet trackers are great ways to stay ahead as an investor in the crypto market when used rightly, like combining it with other methods such as technical and fundamental analysis. Otherwise, it can be the bane of traders and investors.
An excellent understanding of crypto whales’ actions, from the trade they take up to where their funds are transferred, can influence a user’s trading decision in several ways and yield a profitable outcome.
