Key takeaways:

Large Bitcoin holders have accumulated 81,338 BTC over the past six weeks, showing confidence in a future price uptrend.

Wallets with less than 0.1 BTC sold around 290 BTC, indicating smaller retail investors are either panic selling or selling out of boredom. 

Spot Bitcoin ETFs have seen $4.41 billion in inflows since March 26.

While larger Bitcoin holders remain confident and continue accumulating the asset, data from a crypto analytics platform shows that smaller retail investors have been shedding BTC amid the asset’s prolonged consolidation below the $100,000 price level.

The contrasting behavior between Bitcoin (BTC) whales and retail investors often signals that Bitcoin may be heading toward another upward trend, Santiment said in a May 6 X post. 

Bitcoin smaller players show cold feet

“When large wallets gradually accumulate in tandem with retail panic selling/selling out of boredom, it is generally a strong long-term sign of prices biding their time before another breakout,” Santiment said.

Bitcoin wallet holders with between 10 and 10,000 BTC have accumulated a combined 81,338 BTC over the past six weeks since March 26.

This represents a 0.61% increase in the cohort’s total holdings. Santiment said this could signal a potential retest of the psychological $100,000 price level in the near future. “As May progresses, Bitcoin’s key stakeholders are mostly moving in the right direction if you’re rooting for $100K BTC in the near future,” Santiment said.

However, Bitcoin wallets with less than 0.1 BTC sold off approximately 290 Bitcoin over the same period. Since March 26, Bitcoin has traded between $76,273 and $97,210, according to CoinMarketCap data.

Bitcoin is trading at $96,360 at the time of publication. Source: CoinMarketCap

Bitcoin fell below $100,000 on Feb. 1 after US President Donald Trump announced his tariffs and has yet to reclaim that price level. At the time of publication, Bitcoin is trading at $96,360.

Meanwhile, spot Bitcoin ETF holders have accumulated over the same period, with US-based spot Bitcoin ETFs totaling $4.41 billion in inflows since March 26, according to Farside data. 

Bitcoin dominance continues to soar

The overall crypto market is still concentrated around Bitcoin. Bitcoin dominance reached 65% on May 6, the highest reading since January 2021, according to TradingView data. 

Related: Watch these Bitcoin price levels as BTC meets ‘decision point’

At the time of publication, the metric is 65.19%. Meanwhile, CoinMarketCap’s altcoin season index still reads “Bitcoin Season,” indicating the market is favoring Bitcoin over altcoins.

While several analysts have been eyeing new all-time highs by the end of June, Bitfinex analysts recently said that Bitcoin needs to continue to hold above the $95,000 level to climb back and retest its all-time high or face an even deeper correction.

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This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

A hacker involved in the $4.67 million exploit of the decentralized finance lending protocol Voltage Finance in 2022 has moved some of the stolen Ether to Tornado Cash after a short hibernation. 

Blockchain security firm CertiK said in a May 6 post to X that the 100 Ether (ETH), worth $182,783 at current prices, was moved from a different address initially used in the exploit but can be traced back to the hacker.  

In March 2022, the exploiter took advantage of a “built-in callback function” in the ERC677 token standard and allowed them to drain the platform’s lending pool through a reentrancy attack, according to CertiK.

Source: CertiK

After the exploit, Voltage Finance reported that the hacker stole various stablecoins and other crypto, including USDC (USDC), Binance USD (BUSD), wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), and Ethereum tokens. 

The address used by the hacker to get the funds to Tornado Cash had been dormant since November, with the last transaction occurring 166 days ago, Etherscan data shows.

In a postmortem of the 2022 exploit, Voltage Finance said the attacker’s address was flagged on Etherscan, and exchanges had been asked to block any transactions. Attempts were also made to contact the attacker and negotiate a bounty to return the funds.

Voltage Finance staking pools hit in March exploit

Voltage Finance was hit again by another exploit on March 18, when its Simple Staking pools were compromised, the protocol said in a statement posted to X. In total, $322,000 was stolen.

In its March 20 postmortem, Voltage Finance said it offered the attacker a bounty of $50,000 to return the funds and had possibly identified a developer who worked on the Simple Staking pools, who may have been involved.

“While we haven’t confirmed if he is the hacker, as a precaution, we revoked his access immediately and filed police reports to collaborate with law enforcement and centralized exchanges,” it said.

Related: Crypto hackers hit DeFi for $92M in April as attacks double from March

Overall crypto losses spiked by 1,163% in April, with the lion’s share coming from a single heist of an elderly US individual’s wallet, after a hacker used advanced social engineering tactics to steal 3,520 Bitcoin (BTC), worth $330.7 million.

Excluding that attack, April’s crypto losses were $34 million, a 21% jump from March.

However, the month also saw over $18 million returned when the hacker behind the $7.5 million exploit of decentralized exchange KiloEx returned all the stolen funds only four days after the attack.

The ZKsync Association also recovered $5 million worth of stolen tokens from an April 15 security incident involving its airdrop distribution contract.

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South Korea’s Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung has reportedly become the latest presidential candidate to promise the approval of spot crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and other crypto-friendly measures, should he be elected.

Lee announced his crypto promises on May 6 as part of a broader initiative to provide more investment opportunities for Korea’s youth, one of the main target demographics for the fast-approaching June 3 election.

“I will create a safe investment environment so that young people can [build] assets and plan for the future,” The Korea Economic Daily (KED) quoted Lee as saying in Korean.

He also promised the legalization of spot crypto ETFs, lower transaction fees, and more consumer protection measures.

Lee’s Democratic Party of Korea is the favorite to win the presidential election with 42% support, according to a survey conducted by Korea’s National Barometer Survey between April 24 and 30. Korea’s acting president, Han Duck-soo, came in second at 13%.

This is the first time Lee has mentioned crypto as part of his presidential campaign, KED noted. 

The Democratic Party made similar promises in its 2024 general election campaign, including passing spot crypto ETF legalization. However, progress stalled, KED said.

South Korea’s People Power Party makes similar promises

South Korea’s ruling party, the People Power Party, also reportedly made crypto policy promises in late April, which included allowing spot crypto ETFs, dismantling Korea’s controversial one-exchange-one-bank rule, and establishing a regulatory framework for stablecoins.

Source: Cointelegraph

The one-exchange-one-bank rule in South Korea is a regulation that limits each crypto exchange to working with only one local bank. It is intended to prevent money laundering and strengthen transparency by ensuring that the identities of crypto investors can be verified when trading crypto.

South Korean industry officials estimate that 16 million or 31% of the country’s 51.7 million people have access to a crypto account.

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Kim Moon-soo is running as the People Power Party’s candidate — a party previously led by Yoon Suk Yeol, who was impeached after he declared martial law in December.

The controversial measure triggered a considerable fall in Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and other cryptocurrencies. However, most coins recovered when the martial law was lifted around six hours later.

Korea’s Constitutional Court upheld the impeachment of Yoon in a unanimous 8–0 decision decision on April 4, effectively removing him from office.

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