In the first week of February, four wallets purchased 63 billion Shiba Inu [SHIB] tokens, a Doge coin competitor and Ethereum-based alt-coin. (source:fxstreet) Some experts reported a recent rise and a growing trend in traders purchasing meme-based alt-coins. Others recommended potential traders to exercise caution, predicting that this slight bump in price was due to a massive purchase by one single whale. Whale? Some of you may not know what a whale is and why they are important. Here’s a quick rundown.
What are whales in cryptocurrency and in NFT projects?
They are persons, businesses, or any other entities that hold a significant number of tokens of a particular cryptocurrency. In the case of NFTs, they hold a significant amount of NFTs in one DAO or community.
Why should we track whales?
Because of the size of their holdings, these whales can have a major (and often sudden) impact on the price of a token or an NFT, which in turn, can determine the future of that currency or NFT. What’s more, a whale’s involvement in a project often brings increased awareness to that project. Crypto traders and NFT collectors often scan the news to see the movement of whales.
I’m still not sure why we should follow whales? Give me an example.
Okay, let’s use Shiba Inu as an example. As of February 9th, if you Google News search “Shiba Inu,” here’s what you get.
If we look at the headlines, we see “rises 52% a week,” “rebound.” “Metaverse.” Just based on this, we may think to ourselves “things are looking up for Shiba.” Furthermore, when we read the first few articles, we find out that there’s been a recent surge in the price of the alt-coin, but no mention of a recent drop.
Now let’s see what happens when we do a search for “Shiba Inu” and “whale.”
We see “whale wallets,” “price drop,” “Ethereum whales purchase 63 billion.” For some, this spurs us to do more research, and possibly pondering “if Shiba’s price increase is due to several major players, or whales, how much do I trust the project’s future prospects?” What’s more, when we read the articles, we find out that several wallets made massive purchases of Shiba Inu’s coin and that some experts agree and recommend caution.
Tracking whales is an important source of information for traders and there is no formula for what to do with that data. It doesn’t necessarily mean you should sell, stake, or buy. It’s one of many tools and cross-checks that traders use to make as informed of a decision as possible. Databases like Whale Alert track thousands of whales in the cryptocurrency space. They also have a massive following on Twitter, where they post alerts.
So what about whales and NFTs?
Although there are several established services for real-time tracking of crypto whales, real-time tracking NFT is still in its infancy. Useful tools are still scattered across different platforms and NFT collectors need to use a variety of sources to make informed decisions. For example, a user may find out about an NFT mint event via Twitter or Discord, do more research on the collection on rarity.tools, check gas prices on Etherscan, and so forth. At NFT Terminal, we provide several live data feeds to help people who are looking to mint, buy, sell, or stake their NFTs.
What are NFT Terminal’s “notables?”
On NFT Terminal, notables are whales and influencers. Currently we track 872 whales and influencers and provide real-time data on what they sell, buy, transfer, burn, receive airdrops, and mint. On the right-hand panel, we also provide trending transactions such as the most minted, bought, and sold collections in 1-, 4-, and 12-hour intervals.
As we continue to develop our terminal and add features, we hope to add more whales and influencers to our 872 tracked wallets. Stay tuned to NFT Terminal news by following our Twitter account where we’ll post information about updates, NFT news, and NFT giveaways.
Disclaimer: NFT Terminal is an analytics data platform that provides information directly from the blockchain. The content in this article is provided for informational purposes ONLY and should NOT be considered investment advice or strategy.