Из жизни альткоинов

Эксперты платформы Santiment заявили, что вокруг компании Strategy сформировался рекордный уровень страха, который нужно рассматривать как скрытый бычий сигнал для первой криптовалюты.

Крупнейшая в мире криптобиржа Binance стала первой централизованной площадкой, которая добавила в листинг национальный стейблкоин Кыргызстана KGST, привязанный к кыргызскому сому в соотношении 1:1.

Сбербанк рассматривает возможность предоставления кредитов под залог цифровых активов, сообщил зампред правления финучреждения Анатолий Попов.

В уходящем году в криптоиндустрии было заключено рекордное число сделок на общую сумму $8,6 млрд, сообщили опрошенные изданием Financial Times аналитики.

С адресов, связанных с сооснователем рухнувших криптобирж BTC-e и Wex Алексеем Ивановым-Билюченко, 1300 биткоинов были переведены на неизвестные площадки. Об этом сообщил аналитик Arkham Intelligence Эммет Галлик (Emmett Gallic).

Устойчивый отток капитала из криптовалютных биржевых фондов (ETF) вызван тем, что институциональные инвесторы покидают рынок, заявили эксперты ончейн-платформы Glassnode.

Mt. Gox-linked bitcoin tied to Aleksey Bilyuchenko is continuing to filter onto exchanges, extending a slow, closely watched stream of legacy supply that on-chain analysts have been flagging since the fall.

Mt. Gox Hacker Unloads More Bitcoin

Arkham analyst Emmett Gallic said entities related to Aleksey Bilyuchenko deposited another 1,300 BTC, about $114 million, into unknown exchanges over the past seven days. The wallets still hold roughly 4,100 BTC (around $360 million), and have sold a total of 2,300 BTC.

Gallic wrote via X on Dec. 23: “The entity related to Aleksey Bilyuchenko has deposited another 1.3K BTC ($114M) to the unknown exchanges in the past 7 days. They still hold 4.1K BTC ($360M). They have sold a total of 2.3K BTC.”

Bilyuchenko has been charged by the US Department of Justice in connection with the Mt. Gox hack.

The Dec. 23 deposits build on earlier posts in which Gallic described a methodical unwind rather than a one-off dump. On Nov. 9, he said bitcoins “once belonging to BTC-E cofounder Aleksey Bilyuchenko are slowly being sold off through unknown exchanges,” citing 110 BTC deposited over two days.

That Nov. 9 note also emphasized uncertainty around who is actually controlling the funds. “Unclear if he’s still jailed in Russia or in control of these funds, but Moscow courts have seized most of his other assets,” Gallic wrote.

The repeated use of “unknown exchanges” suggests the destination clusters are not cleanly attributable to major, labeled venues in the datasets Gallic is using. For market participants, that makes the flow harder to handicap: deposits can signal intent to sell, but the execution path is less transparent than transfers into well-known exchange wallets.

In an Oct. 17 post, Gallic went further, alleging that “almost 8K BTC … related to the WEX/BTCE case are controlled by Russian authorities,” including “the 6.5K BTC that moved earlier today.” He attributed that control to a specific unit—“3rd department of the 2nd service of the CSS of the FSB”—and linked to a Russian-language investigative article.

Who Is Bilyuchenko?

In Russia, Bilyuchenko has faced a separate WEX-related criminal case that has already produced a conviction. On March 18, 2024, the Moscow City Court upheld an earlier guilty verdict against Alexey Bilyuchenko, described in local reporting as a system administrator of the WEX exchange.

Bilyuchenko was accused of embezzling 3.1 billion rubles in WEX assets; the Meshchansky District Court sentenced him in September 2023 to 3.5 years in prison and a 500,000-ruble fine, and the appeal court left that decision in place, bringing the verdict into legal force.

In the United States, the posture is different: prosecutors have unsealed charges. The case is still ongoing. In June 2023, the Department of Justice announced the unsealing of charges against Bilyuchenko and Aleksandr Verner in the Southern District of New York, accusing them of conspiring to launder approximately 647,000 bitcoin tied to the 2011 Mt. Gox hack. The SDNY indictment charges both men with conspiracy to commit money laundering, carrying a maximum potential penalty of 20 years in prison.

Separately, Bilyuchenko is charged in the Northern District of California with conspiracy to commit money laundering and operating an unlicensed money services business, tied to allegations that he worked with Alexander Vinnik and others to operate BTC-e from 2011 until it was shut down in July 2017. DOJ listed a maximum potential penalty of 25 years on those NDCA charges.

At press time, BTC traded at $87,756.

Инвестор, ветеран криптоиндустрии и генеральный директор 10T Holdings Дэн Тапиеро (Dan Tapiero) считает, что говорить об окончании цикла роста биткоина преждевременно ― наоборот, рынок находится лишь в его середине.

Крупные майнинговые компании перепрофилируют свои дата-центры под задачи искусственного интеллекта (ИИ), ввиду снижения доходов от добычи первой криптовалюты,  заявили аналитики The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

On-chain data shows newbie Bitcoin whales have seen their loss-taking flatten recently, a potential sign that their capitulation has paused.

Bitcoin Whale Selling Has Returned To Neutral Recently

In a new post on X, on-chain analytics firm CryptoQuant has talked about how the behavior of the Bitcoin whales has changed recently. “Whales” refer to the BTC investors who are carrying more than 1,000 tokens of the cryptocurrency in their wallet balance.

At the current exchange rate, the cutoff for the cohort converts to $86.7 million, which is quite significant. The large size of their holdings can make these investors carry some degree of influence in the market.

As such, the behavior of the whales can be worth keeping an eye on. There are many ways to track whale behavior, with one such being through the Realized Profit/Loss indicator.

This metric measures, as its name implies, the net amount of profit or loss that the members of the group as a whole are realizing through their transactions. A positive value indicates profit-taking is dominant, while a negative one suggests realized losses outweigh profits.

Whales can be divided into two subgroups, called the short-term holder (STH) or New Whales and long-term holder (LTH) or Old Whales. The former group includes the whale investors who purchased their coins within the past 155 days, while the latter is made up of the whales who have been holding for longer than this period.

Now, here is the chart shared by CryptoQuant that shows the trend in the Bitcoin Realized Profit/Loss for New and Old Whales over the last few months:

As displayed in the above graph, the Bitcoin Realized Profit/Loss has mostly been inside the loss territory for the whales since the cryptocurrency’s price witnessed a bearish shift in October.

New Whales in particular have been responsible for the majority of the loss realization, with one loss-taking spike even crossing the $600 million mark. “Realized losses from new whales significantly impacted the price drop from $124K to $84K,” noted the analytics firm.

From the chart, it’s visible that loss realization from these humongous Bitcoin investors has seen a decline recently as BTC’s bearish momentum has subsided and its price has settled into a phase of consolidation.

During the past week, the Realized Profit/Loss has even minimized to a neutral level for both New and Old Whales, implying the largest of hands in the market have only been shifting coins close to cost basis.

Whether this suggests that the phase of whale capitulation is over only remains to be seen, but for now, these investors have indeed hit the pause button.

BTC Price

Bitcoin started the week with a recovery surge above $90,000, but the asset has quickly gone downhill as it’s back at $87,000.

An interesting round of institutional repositioning played out across crypto investment products last week, as nearly $1 billion exited the market following several weeks of steady inflows. 

The latest Digital Asset Fund Flows Weekly Report from CoinShares shows that the pullback was not evenly distributed. Capital rotated away from Bitcoin and Ethereum, while select altcoins like XRP and Solana continued to attract interest and inflows among institutional investors.

US-Led Outflows As Regulatory Delays Weigh On Sentiment

The report shows that digital asset investment products recorded $952 million in net outflows last week, which is the first negative week of trading after three weeks of consecutive inflows. CoinShares attributed the shift largely to delays surrounding the US Clarity Act.

Therefore, the outflows were overwhelmingly concentrated geographically in the United States, which accounted for $990 million in withdrawals during the week. As it stands, these products are on track to end 2025 with lower net inflows compared to 2024, with total assets under management standing at $46.7 billion compared with $48.7 billion in 2024. 

Investor sentiment outside the US was much more resilient than expected. However, the heavy US selling was only partially offset by inflows from other regions, most notably Canada and Germany. Particularly, Canadian-listed products saw inflows of $15.6 million for the week, while crypto products based in Germany added about $46.2 million during the week.

Capital Rotates From Bitcoin And Ethereum To XRP And Solana

At the asset level, Ethereum experienced the largest outflows, with $555 million leaving ETH-based investment products. This deviates from the trend of Bitcoin leading inflows and outflows every week. Most of the Ethereum fund outflows were from US-based Spot Ethereum ETFs, which witnessed net outflows every day of the week last week.

CoinShares noted that the Ethereum outflows are because it is currently sensitive to regulatory developments, given it has the most to gain or lose if the Clarity Act is passed into law. Even so, Ethereum’s year-to-date inflows are at $12.7 billion, well above the $5.3 billion recorded throughout last year.

Bitcoin followed closely behind, posting $460 million in weekly outflows. Although Bitcoin is still leading the market in cumulative inflows for the year at roughly $27.2 billion, this figure is significantly below the $41.6 billion seen in 2024.

Despite the broader risk-off tone set by Bitcoin and Ethereum, Solana and XRP attracted notable inflows last week, and this supports the idea of ongoing selective institutional support. In terms of numbers Solana recorded $48.5 million in inflows last week, while XRP led the altcoin pack with $62.9 million. Spot XRP ETFs, for one, are yet to register a day of net outflows since their launch in the United States

Taken together, the data from CoinShares’ latest report points to a market that is not abandoning crypto entirely but reevaluating allocations while waiting for clearer regulatory signals, particularly from the United States.

Market expert Mr. Crypto Whale on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) has attributed the recent Bitcoin price drop—falling below the $90,000 mark—to key developments in China. According to this analyst, the situation has been set in motion by renewed restrictions on domestic Bitcoin mining.

China’s Crackdown On Bitcoin Mining

Specifically, it was reported that China has intensified its crackdown on mining activities, particularly in the Xinjiang region, where a large segment of operations was halted in December. 

The expert noted that this abrupt closure led to around 400,000 miners being taken offline in a very short time, reflecting a significant shake-up in the network’s mining capacity.

The ramifications of this disappearance of miners are already evident in the data; the Bitcoin network’s hashrate has dropped by approximately 8%. 

Notably, when miners are suddenly forced offline, the immediate consequences can be severe. Revenue comes to a halt, and the costs associated with relocating operations can result in cash flow pressures. As a result, some miners are compelled to liquidate BTC holdings, contributing to sell pressure in the market.

Despite these current challenges, Mr. Crypto Whale suggests that this should not be viewed as a long-term bearish signal for Bitcoin. The expert believes that this is temporary supply shock driven by policy changes rather than a decrease in demand for the cryptocurrency.

Potential 60% Drop Ahead

Historical patterns indicate a cyclical nature to these events: after China enacts mining crackdowns, miners are forced to shut down, the hashrate takes a hit, and Bitcoin’s price experiences volatility. However, the network typically adjusts, allowing Bitcoin to recover.

In the short term, increased volatility can be anticipated. However, Mr. Crypto Whale asserts that in the long term, the fundamentals for the Bitcoin price remain intact. 

Technical analysis conducted by noted analyst Ali Martinez underscores the immediate focus for investors, particularly regarding the critical price level of $86,738, deemed essential to prevent a new crash. 

Martinez notes that historically, each time Bitcoin has fallen below the 50-week simple moving average (SMA), it has dropped, on average, by 60%. 

Currently, Bitcoin is trading just above that crucial threshold at $87,930. If this level is breached, Martinez’s analysis warns that the price could plummet to as low as $40,000.

Featured image from DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com