Bitcoin (BTC) is seeing a new kind of "flippening" above $20,000 as its original whales proceed selling their coins to bigger institutional buyers.

Information from on-concatenation analytics service CryptoQuant shows that despite long-term investors rushing to offload BTC at a profit, buyer demand is still outpacing them.

Analyst: Bitcoin whales "small" compared to new buyers

With BTC/USD continuing to explore new highs, the "original" whales are beginning to look like plankton as institutions line upwardly to purchase en masse.

According to the CryptoQuant data covering exchanges, outflows hit yearly highs in the hours before $twenty,000 broke for the first time in history. The combined shortage of BTC on exchanges and institutional buying in over-the-counter venues lays the foundation for a fight over the remaining supply — and cost rises are the only logical solution.

"I'll repeat... liquidity crunch incoming," Danny Scott, CEO of Great britain-based exchange Money Corner, summarized well-nigh the condition quo.

Even CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju, who said that he shorted Bitcoin at $20,800, admitted that he had been surprised by the whale activity.

"Volition focus on the bigger whales next fourth dimension," he tweeted as the marketplace kept absorbing large sells.

"OG whales were small whales."
Bitcoin exchange internet flow yr-to-appointment nautical chart. Source: CryptoQuant

Ki subsequently highlighted what he described as "massive" outflows from exchange Coinbase equally show of the institutional over-the-counter, or OTC, activities. Electric current BTC reserves at exchanges are at their lowest levels since November 2018.

"It looks like massive Coinbase outflows usually go to their new cold wallet for custody/OTC that held 6000–8000 $BTC. #Greyscale uses #GenesisTrading for buying Bitcoins, and #GenesisTrading uses Coinbase Custody," he wrote alongside an annotated nautical chart.

Ki Young Ju's annotated BTC/USD vs. outflows chart. Source: Twitter

Asset manager sees no end in sight to buy-ins

As Cointelegraph reported, the extent of institutional uptake this calendar month is rapidly becoming an order of magnitude more meaning.

In addition to Guggenheim giving a $400,000 price evaluation, hedge fund 1 River Asset Direction confirmed on Midweek that it planned to bring its Bitcoin and Ether (ETH) holdings to more than $1 billion by 2021.

"In that location is going to exist a generational resource allotment to this new asset form," Bloomberg quoted CEO Eric Peters every bit having said.

"The flows take only but begun."

The $one billion target immediately pits One River against the largest crypto institutions, among them Grayscale, which itself took its total assets under management over $13 billion this week.