While there’s a number of bitcoin whales that often get caught by blockchain parsers and written about in media reports, ethereum whales get a lot less attention. According to statistics in 2022, there are a lot more ethereum whales than holders with large sums of bitcoin. In fact, while the top 100 richest bitcoin addresses control 14.08% of the circulating supply, the top 100 richest ethereum addresses hold 39.81% of all the ether today.
Data shows Ethereum still has a large concentration of whales in 2022
Ethereum, the second largest crypto asset by market capitalization, has an aggregate USD valuation of around $348 billion. Ethereum’s market capitalization is 18.3% of the crypto-economy’s net worth of $1.89 trillion. While the main crypto asset has been around for almost seven years, 100 addresses command 39.81% of the current ether in circulation. However, after subtracting the Ethereum 2.0 contract address, which holds 10.06% of the current ether in circulation, 99 wealthy addresses hold 29.75%.
From the top five richest ethereum addresses alone, 5.17% of the ETH supply is controlled by the Wrapped Ether contract, 1.78% of the ETH supply is held by the trading platform Kraken, and 1.68% is held by Binance. Many of the 100 richest ethereum addresses are centralized exchange platforms and decentralized finance (defi) protocol reserves. This includes exchanges and protocols such as Bitfinex, Okex, FTX, Polkadot Multi-Sig, Arbitrum’s bridge, and Lido. After the 57th largest ethereum address, the majority of the rest are unknown wallets or simply whales.
In the block, the statistics show addresses that own more than 1% of the circulating supply and addresses that own between 0.1% and 1% of the circulating supply, which equals 41%. These same measures applied to the top 100 bitcoin addresses equal 10%. From this perspective, the data shows that there are far more ether-whales than the concentration of large bitcoin holders. Additionally, some of these Ethereum whales have made a name for themselves as blockchain analyzers are starting to monitor their activities more often.
Meet Some of Ethereum’s Most Famous Whale Addresses — Light, Locke, Tsunade, Bluewhale0072, and Bluewhale0073
For instance, whalestats.com gives an interesting perspective of the ether whales who not only hold ethereum but also tokens and non-fungible token (NFT) assets. Whalestats.com labels the rich list, and the top five addresses include wallets called “Light,” “Locke,” “Tsunade,” “Bluewhale0072,” and “Bluewhale0073.” The wallet Bluewhale0073 has been making headlines lately for purchasing and selling massive amounts of shiba inu (SHIB). Whalestats monitors whales “who are worth an average of $75,905,160 and hodl an average of 10,236 ETH, 34 tokens, and 1 NFT.”
The address called Light is currently worth over $17.9 billion today and holds 136 NFTs from 54 collections. While none of the NFTs are hugely valuable, Light’s SHIB stash is worth $786.69 million. Light also holds $218.74 million in CRO and $217.08 million in tether (USDT). The whale’s Ethereum stash is worth $87.57 million, as Light holds 30,320 Ether. Light also has multi-million dollar reserves of USD coins (USDC), enjin coins (ENJ), sandbox coins (SAND) and decentraland coins (MANA).
The address dubbed Locke currently holds $13.52 billion in digital assets today. Locke holds 151 NFTs from 53 different collections and $109.3 million worth of ethereum. Locke also owns millions of dollars worth of BAT, SAND, UPXAU, MATIC, SHIB, LINK, FTM, and APE. The address also holds hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of ENJ, USDC, USDT, GRT, SRM, SPELL, and QNT. The whale address called Tsunade holds $186.9 million and 162 NFTs from 57 different collections. Tsunade has $60.07 million in USDT, $40.44 million in SHIB, and $36.5 million in ETH.
Bluewhale0072 is the fourth largest ether whale on whalestats.com and the address contains 100 NFTs from 37 different collections. The wallet is currently worth $67.4 million today and $40.67 million of the funds in the wallet are held in tether (USDT). Bluewhale0072 also owns a large portion of wrapped bitcoin (WBTC) and today owns $4.99 million worth of WBTC. As mentioned above, Bluewhale0073 has been written a few times and lately. Indeed, at certain times, Bluewhale0073 buys large quantities of shiba inu (SHIB).
Bluewhale0073’s USD value today is $122.98 million and the wallet only owns ten NFTs from four different collections. A large portion of Bluewhale0073’s wealth is in ethereum (ETH) as the wallet holds $114.53 million in ether today. Bluewhale0073 also holds $5.53 million in USDT, $1.75 million in USDC, $640K in MATIC, and $19,324 in SHIB. While reports noted that Bluewhale0073 was purchasing millions of dollars of SHIB, the address sold most of the meme-coin, trading for other coins like ETH.
Although we don’t know who all the Ethereum whales are, they are regularly captured by blockchain analytics and they can be tracked. Crypto whales have always been an enigma and they are called whales because they are massive compared to the rest of the small fish in the digital currency industry. Much like whales in the ocean, crypto-whales can cause large, volatile waves within the crypto-economy.
