Bitcoin (BTC) Whales Added 113,950 BTC Since July 15 as Holdings Hit 5.24M

Whales Add 113,950 BTC Since Mid-July

Bitcoin (BTC) briefly touched the $87,000 level earlier this week — its first visit there since January — before pulling back and settling near $84,000. The level matters because January marked the top of the prior consolidation, so a sustained break above it changes the market's higher-timeframe picture. The retracement, meanwhile, has done nothing to slow the market's largest holders. Data from on-chain analytics platform Santiment shows that wallets in the 100 to 1,000 BTC band — the mid-tier of whale wallets that on-chain desks watch most closely for directional turns — stepped up their buying through the dip, a sign that large-scale conviction in the upside persists even as price cools.

That cohort has added roughly 113,950 BTC since July 15, lifting its aggregate holdings by 2.22% to approximately 5.24 million BTC, as of the platform's latest cohort update. Santiment has tracked this specific band for five years, and its records show that these wallets' accumulation phases have often aligned with the broader direction of the crypto market. Historically, stretches of aggressive buying from this group have appeared just before or during the strongest rallies in Bitcoin's price history. The pattern has held through the sharp advance that began in mid-August: large holders kept adding not only on weakness but into strength, which suggests the rally is not resting on retail demand alone. Momentum turned after a technically significant event — BTC pushed back above its 365-day moving average, which sat near $80,500. The last comparable reclaim came in March 2023, before the price extended meaningfully higher, and some analysts read the current structure as a potential shift in the long-term trend. On the way up, the asset also cleared a dense supply zone between $76,000 and $81,000, removing an overhang that had capped earlier attempts at this range.

Booth: $1 Million Is Thinking Too Small

Long-horizon framing moved this week as well. Jeff Booth, the economist and author of The Price of Tomorrow, argued that a $1 million Bitcoin price target is “thinking too small.” His reasoning: valuing Bitcoin in US dollars means pricing the asset against a system he describes as rigged by monetary debasement, so any dollar-denominated target understates the structural change underway. In his view, Bitcoin is not simply a coin or an asset but the beginning of a decentralized, secure and private protocol stack — one built on the Bitcoin (BTC) network — that will resemble the internet's development, and evidence of the first genuinely free market that has ever existed. Booth built the case around the collision between technological deflation and a debt-based monetary order. He cited roughly $40 trillion of United States debt, bond yields under strain, and an estimated $350 trillion global financial system he characterizes as insolvent. Free markets, he argued, push the prices of AI-driven productivity toward zero, deepening the tension with a credit structure that requires perpetual expansion. That tension, in his framing, is what makes a fixed-supply asset valuable beyond any fiat quote. On adoption, he pointed to Bitcoin payments and circular economies scaling worldwide, and to structures such as Bitcoin-backed private equity in which businesses could in principle be held indefinitely. The treasury-style accumulation behind such vehicles is under scrutiny too — DWF Ventures recently put Strategy's mNAV below par at 0.97x. He also addressed claims of an approaching AI singularity, framing the fear around it as a driver of monopoly-friendly regulation. His thesis echoes the Bitcoin maximalism argument that only a fixed-supply ledger escapes the fiat game, though he rests the case on deflation mechanics rather than ideology. It also diverges from purely dollar-denominated calls: Volmex CEO Cole Kennelly has projected a $500,000 Bitcoin target by 2028, a figure that reads very differently through Booth's debasement lens. For cycle mappers who time entries with a Bitcoin Rainbow Chart, the point cuts deeper: the logarithmic bands themselves are drawn in dollars. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Bybit.

$88,000-$90,000 Shelf Is the Next Test

Read together, the two threads describe one market at different altitudes. COINOTAG's read: the load-bearing record is the cohort data itself — Santiment's five-year series on the 100 to 1,000 BTC band, whose moves have historically front-run major directional turns — showing 113,950 BTC added even through a $3,000 pullback. Booth supplies the why: a debasement trade indifferent to any single day's tape. The near-term test is now defined — the $88,000-$90,000 zone, where a large quantity of Bitcoin sits on-chain, will show whether the supply shelf absorbs selling or gives way, with flows we continue to follow in our Bitcoin coverage. CryptoQuant founder Ki Young Ju expects a 3-5x move this cycle rather than a 10x blow-off, with a milder bear market as institutional participation dampens volatility — a regime that rewards HODL discipline over momentum chasing.