Bitcoin whale holdings at 7-month highs despite warnings of BTC price crash to $20K

cointelegraph.com:

Bitcoin (BTC) prices could drop by 20% in the next few months, but that has not deterred its richest investors from stacking.

The amount of Bitcoin held by "unique entities" with a balance of at least 1,000 BTC, or so-called "whales," has increased to its best levels since September 2021, data on Glassnode shows.

Interestingly, the number in the past week grew despite Bitcoin's price decline from $43,000 to around $38,000.

Marcus Sotiriou, an analyst at GlobalBlock, a U.K.-based digital asset broker, considered the latest spike in Bitcoin whale holdings as a bullish indicator, recalling a similar move in September 2021 that preceded a BTC price rally to $69,000 all-time highs in November 2021.

"As whales have a substantial impact on the market, this metric is an important one to take note of," he said.

Bitcoin's price has fallen from $69,000 in November last year to almost $40,000 in late April 2022, driven lower primarily due to Federal Reserve's decision to aggressively hike interest rates and unwind its quantitative easing program to tame inflation.

Interestingly, Bitcoin's fall has mirrored similar downside moves in the U.S. equity market, with its correlation with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite reaching 0.99 in mid-April. An efficiency reading of 1 shows that the two assets have been moving in perfect tandem. 

"You should think about this high correlation as a gravitational field pulling on Bitcoin’s price," says Nick, analyst at data resource Ecoinometrics. He adds:

Technicals agree with depressive fundamental indicators. Notably, Bitcoin has been breaking down from a "bear flag" pattern, risks undergoing further price declines in the coming months, as illustrated in the chart below.

The bear flag's downside target sits