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Whales are active, is ARK the next TRB?

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Withdrawals of over 40 million ARK, worth over 60 million US dollars, were made from just 5 whale addresses, accounting for 22.5% of the total supply.

Over the past three months, while BTC has not yet ushered in the "crazy bull market" that retail investors have been hoping for, small coins have sparked a frenzy starting at 10 times. The cryptocurrency market, which has been in a bear market for nearly two years, has been struggling to rise. TRB, GAS, BLZ..., Binance's small-cap coins seem to have accurately predicted the bullish news of BTC spot ETF and the subsequent BRC20 hotspots, launching a wave of uptrends in advance.

TRB has also been ranked as the "most classic operation" of 2023, thanks to its nearly 20-fold increase in just 2 months, extremely high perpetual contract fees, and a rise without any "needle-insertion" corrections, dominating the Binance Square.

It is not uncommon for ARK, which has tripled in value since the end of October, to share many of the early TRB's characteristics. This is even more evident from the analysis of on-chain data, where the frequent appearance of whales raises concerns about future trends.

Phase One: Binance Whales Appear, Large-scale Arbitrage Traders Emerge

According to CMC data, by the end of October 2023, the total amount of ARK in UPBIT's cold and hot wallets will account for more than 50% of the total issuance of ARK, while Binance only accounts for about 20%. However, Binance's price has been significantly rising since October 29th, and has always been relatively premium compared to UPBIT, leading to a large migration of ARK holdings. In less than half a month, the proportion of ARK in UPBIT's wallet has dropped by more than 30%, while the proportion in Binance has correspondingly increased, becoming the largest concentration of ARK on the entire network.

During this process, Binance emerged with strong buying power. According to data analysis, from October 29th to October 31st, Binance's ARK spot trading volume exceeded 400 million coins in just three days, which is equivalent to more than 200% of the total circulation, with extremely active turnover. Several whale accounts net bought more than 50 million ARK during this period, which is an absolute force driving the market.

And the price difference between UPBIT and Binance also provides excellent opportunities for arbitrageurs. According to on-chain data, the wallet address is:

· AMMwxQZGYLEGwSQyy3Q6nmViTD36WCnTQ4

· ANapGk9mbnMZtVhyiNrKpWL6ZcUZqg1xyT

Freqent large transfers between two exchanges, with the proportion of deposits and withdrawals exceeding 40% at one point, have captured most of the profits from arbitrage between exchanges during this market trend.

Second Stage: Large Withdrawals and Increased Voting

With the slowdown of the first stage of whale buying, a large amount of ARK outflow appeared on Binance. ARKSCAN shows that just five whale addresses withdrew more than 40 million ARK, worth over 60 million US dollars, accounting for 22.5% of the total supply. Currently, these addresses are still only depositing and not withdrawing, indicating obvious hoarding behavior.

· AZQydzyd9GauPFY9VetpPqkvB4Ka2kPZ7T

· AQ3fq7zp4QZjTQkhmXQsdvNTY5mCLgqKEy

· AS9udo7QPuKv3r3HEo46McWeCkAC63XgQT

· AMTjcfENnH4fr32sneYUesLRd9GHEXcjNm

· AHd3DPCtsFwAoVdn3NGvnZ5ENvkeBAkzVn

Meanwhile, ARK, which uses the DPOS consensus mechanism, has a voting system. Since its price increase, the total staked and voted amount on the network has rapidly increased. From November 20th to 25th alone, the voting amount increased from less than 40 million to over 61 million, with more than 20 million ARK added to the votes, an increase of over 50%. The network's voting rate reached 36%, leading to a further reduction in the actual circulating supply of ARK.

There are indications that the current ARK market trend was initiated by whales on Binance, causing most of UPBIT's inventory to be transferred to Binance. The whales then withdrew their funds to cold wallets for storage. The voting rate for ARK across the network has also rapidly increased recently, locking in actual liquidity. These series of actions are reminiscent of the first wave of TRB's surge, with Binance's large volume buying, large deposits into cold wallets, and no pullback similar situations. Combined with the fact that ARK is an old project before 2017, first launched in "gambling-strong" South Korea, the token has already been fully circulated, and its cross-chain concept may resonate with the L2 hotspots. Additionally, both Gate and Binance chose to go online in the recent period, making it a "physique" for this round of Binance's small market value coin explosion.

Currently, ARK has risen threefold and is hovering around 1.6U. We await to see if it can continue the myth of TRB.