The cryptocurrency market has started this week dominated by a bullish sentiment, with most cryptocurrencies accruing gains. This recent price action has attracted the interest of crypto whales, reaching short-term record highs.
In particular, an insight from Santiment shows Optimism (OP) and Chiliz (CHZ) with rising whale activity on May 20. However, despite a seemingly positive metric, Santiment‘s analyst, Brian Q, believes this could foreshadow volatility and trend reversals.
“With crypto rebounding big today, keep an eye on the rising whale activity among many altcoins like Optimism and Chiliz. Sudden high onchain activity among their largest traders typically will foreshadow major volatility and OP & CHZ reversals.”
– Brian Q, for Santiment
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Notably, the chart shows 392 and 46 whale transaction counts for OP and CHZ, respectively. This category includes all transactions worth $100,000 or more registered on the Ethereum (ETH) and Optimism networks.
How does whale activity correlate to price?
Essentially, cryptocurrencies moving on the blockchain usually means one of these three things:
One, someone has purchased these amounts in a cryptocurrency exchange, withdrawing to a self-custody wallet. Two, Someone wants to sell these amounts and is depositing to an exchange for that intent. Or, three, someone is making a wallet-to-wallet transaction either for themselves or for someone else.
However, the first two are the most common activities— buying or selling, while withdrawing or depositing.
On that note, withdrawing activity is retroactive, meaning the whale has already bought the tokens and influenced their price. Meanwhile, if spotted in time, depositing can forecast further price impacts as the assets are yet to be sold.
Therefore, high whale activity could sometimes foreshadow volatility and reversals, although not guaranteed.
Optimism (OP) and Chiliz (CHZ) price analysis
As of this writing, OP was trading at $2.92 per token, up nearly 20% in a month, while CHZ was trading at $0.124, up 7.6% in the same period.
Notably, Optimism is currently testing a price resistance in the monthly chart, while CHZ has broken out of resistance in the weekly chart and heading toward key zones in the higher time frame.
This suggests that, if Santiment’s analyst is right, these assets could experience increased volatility and likely retrace at any moment. Nevertheless, the market is unpredictable, and everything can happen in the short term for these cryptocurrencies.
Disclaimer: The content on this site should not be considered investment advice. Investing is speculative. When investing, your capital is at risk.
