Exchange Ranking
Top Exchanges
24h Volume Ranking
Popularity Ranking
Exchange BTC Balance
Proof of Reserves
Decentralized Exchanges
Funding Rate
Funding Heatmap
Liquidation Data
Max Pain
Long/Short Ratio
Whale L/S Ratio
Binance/Okex/Huobi L/S
Bitfinex Margin L/S
ETF Tracker
Solana ETF
XRP ETF
Hong Kong ETF
Bitcoin Treasuries
Crypto Reversal
Ethereum Reserves
HyperLiquid Wallet Analysis
Hyperliquid Whale Watch
Large Transactions
On-chain Movement
Bitcoin ROI
Stablecoin Market Cap
Options Analysis
News
Articles
Economic Calendar
Features
Wallet
Contract Calculator
Security
Collections
Watchlist
Following
ETH Ethereum whale activity analysis: stablecoin preference and market sentiment
In the past seven days, Ethereum whale activity has not shown a clear trend, although the high volatility suggests that the whales are still active. In recent analysis, despite the high activity, no significant buy or sell bias was observed. One question that needs to be answered is: Are whales transferring wealth to stablecoins, or vice versa? This will help us understand the dominant sentiments of large buyers who account for a significant share of market value.
We analyzed data from the top two stablecoins USDT and USDC on the Decentralized Exchange (DEX) in the past seven days (data source: Dune Analytics), and found that there are only minor differences between stablecoins and Ethereum, with stablecoins having a slight advantage. However, what's even more interesting is that USDC is significantly more popular than USDT. We dug deeper into the reasons for this preference.
Whales favor stablecoins slightly over Ethereum
Similar to previous research that revealed no significant bias in ETH trading on DEX, whales seem to be buying slightly more stablecoins rather than ETH. The transaction volume from ETH to stablecoin was US$184 million, while the transaction volume from stablecoin to ETH was US$170 million. The difference between the two was about US$14 million, with stablecoin dominating. However, this relatively small imbalance suggests more cautious positions rather than decisive exit from ETH. A significant difference in trading volumes would suggest that large buyers are withdrawing from ETH, which would raise concerns that the bear market could intensify, but that is not the case at the moment.
Large buyers prefer stablecoins slightly.
Large buyers prefer USDC to USDT
Data further reveals that large buyers not only have a small inflow of stablecoins, but also significantly prefer USDC. Of the approximately US$162 million in stablecoin transaction volume in the past seven days, USDC exceeded US$120 million, while USDT was only approximately US$41 million. There are two possibilities here: First, large buyers do prefer USDC for different reasons such as security and cost; second, the data may show a false preference for USDC, because most DEXs provide more USDC transaction pairs than USDTs, but this seems to be the case.
Large buyers prefer USDC to USDT.
We analyzed transaction volumes by trading platform to examine the performance of two stablecoins on platforms that offer both. Interestingly, Uniswap is the preferred platform, with transaction volume of US$135 million (more than 83% of the total US$162 million) and supports both USDC and USDT. USDC still outperforms USDT, accounting for more than 77% of Uniswap stablecoin transaction volume and worth more than US$104 million. This suggests that large traders do prefer USDC, while USDT's transaction volume is just over $30 million.
USDC transaction volume on Uniswap is significantly higher.
Conclusion
There may be multiple reasons for large buyers 'preference for USDC. First, USDC may be more liquid than USDT, allowing large traders to execute millions of dollars in large transactions with the smallest possible slip point, saving thousands of dollars. In addition, USDC is widely used as a dollar-denominated asset in DeFi, which is experiencing significant growth, causing its transaction volume to be higher than the USDT. In short, large buyers have not withdrawn from ETH. The small difference in capital flows suggests that despite the decline in ETH prices, market sentiment is more about cautious positions rather than outright bearish. This is good news for retail traders, especially since we have confirmed that the decline is not related to whale activity.
