Bitcoin Whales Trigger Market Plunge: Sell-Offs Perfectly Timed With Price Crashes
Whale watching just got more ominous—massive Bitcoin dumps are now synced with market downturns.
When the big fish sneeze, retail catches a cold.
Subheader: The Domino Effect of Whale Movements
Every sell-off from major holders sends shockwaves—liquidity vanishes faster than a meme coin’s promises. Exchanges tremble, stop-losses trigger, and suddenly your portfolio’s bleeding out.
Subheader: A Game of High-Stakes Poker
Whales aren’t just exiting—they’re engineering exits. Coordinated? Maybe. Ruthless? Absolutely. Meanwhile, analysts scramble to call it ‘profit-taking’ while quietly updating their resumes.
Closing jab: Traders cling to ‘buy the dip’ like Wall Street clings to outdated inflation models—blind faith meets brutal math.
Over $45 billion offloaded by long-term holders in October
Long-time Bitcoin investors offloaded around 400,000 BTC in the past month, equivalent to about $45 billion, according to Markus Thielen, head of research at 10x Research. The outflow left the market “unbalanced” after months of sustained accumulation.
Bitcoin dropped below $100,000 for the first time since June, down more than 20% from the all-time high reached on October 6. Thielen expects the current market slowdown to persist into next year, even as far as taking the king coin down to $85,000 as the “maximum downside.”
$BTC – #Bitcoin: Think we will see some consolidation here before we see some deciding price action. pic.twitter.com/3OCGkzl0gR
— crypto Fella (@CryptoFellaTx) November 10, 2025
The market researcher cited data from Coinbase-owned exchange Deribit, which showed a surge in demand for put contracts expiring in late November with strike prices around $80,000. Traders are supposedly building hedges against more declines and expect a different scenario to December 2024’s “Trump-market” bull run.
According to CryptoQuant contributor Crazzyblock, coins held for one to six months accounted for nearly 71% of recent exchange inflows. Holders who accumulated Bitcoin between $60,000 and $85,000 during the summer are now realizing more than 40% profits.
Bitcoin holders with positions older than two years contributed only 2.19% to recent selling pressure, while those holding for over five years made up just 0.58%. Professional transactions involving 10 to 100 BTC accounted for 53.1% of flows; the “fish” tier, those holding between 10 and 50 BTC, moved an average of 2,450 BTC daily, and “sharks” added 467 BTC.
Together, professional categories contributed over 63% of total volume, compared with 36.8% from retail investors. Analysts view this as evidence of institutional repositioning rather than retail-driven capitulation.
Spot holdings-ETF transition among veteran holders
As reported by Cryptopolitan on Monday, Head of Research at financial services platform Uphold, Dr. Martin Hiesboeck, said that a portion of Bitcoin’s “original gang” holders are now diversifying into ETFs and new blockchain projects.
“BTC whales are beginning to sell their coins as they transition into exchange-traded funds,” Hiesboeck explained, “Long-term holders have realized that blockchain itself, now used in nearly every industry, is the real revolution.”
Hiesboeck shared a chart from Bitbo showing Bitcoin’s compound annual growth rate (CAGR) declining by about 13%.
Despite the turbulence, market watchers believe Bitcoin may be undergoing a healthy correction rather than a breakdown. The 16% pullback from its all-time high mark is the third full correction of the current cycle, resetting momentum without breaking the long-term uptrend that has persisted since early 2023.
“Every time Bitcoin corrects, the same voices declare it finished. They said it after the 2018 crash to $3,191.30, and again in 2022 at $15,599.05. Yet here we are,” said Bulgarian Bitcoin influencer Plamen Andonov.
Bitcoin’s relative strength index (RSI) sits on its multi-year base, while the moving average convergence divergence (MACD) has flattened in the same range that preceded major breakouts in 2023 and 2024. Analysts point out that similar setups historically triggered rallies between 80% and 180% in subsequent months.
Sharpen your strategy with mentorship + daily ideas - 30 days free access to our trading program
