Bitcoins began to withdraw from exchanges en masse. What does this mean?

At the end of January, more than 40 thousand BTC ($1.5 billion at the exchange rate on February 2) were withdrawn from trading platforms. This is the largest cryptocurrency outflow since September 2021

Last week was a record-breaking week for bitcoin outflows from cryptocurrency exchanges, according to analyst firm Santiment. In the last days of January, more than 40 thousand BTC were withdrawn from trading platforms, the value of which is estimated at $1.5 billion as of February 2. RBC-Crypto experts explained whether this could point to mass purchases of cryptocurrency and its further recovery.

Ambiguous signal.
Bitcoin withdrawal statistics from exchanges last week are ambiguous, according to Cryptorg CEO Andrey Podolyan. According to him, it should not be said that a large number of bitcoins were withdrawn from trading platforms.

"The data is not quite right. On some exchanges, the outflow, indeed, was greater. But on other cryptocurrencies more came in," the expert noted.

According to Podolyan, bitcoin should go through another wave of decline and then break the global downtrend. The expert also advised to closely monitor the situation in the U.S. stock market, because the cryptocurrency now follows it.

Long-term outlook.
Bitcoins are withdrawn from exchanges since 2020, despite this, in the last year and a half there were two strong collapses: from May to August and from November to January, recalled the financial analyst of the crypto exchange Currency.com Mikhail Karkhalev. He explained that the outflow of bitcoins from exchanges forms a shortage of the asset in the long term, but there is no direct and rapid impact, as it turned out thanks to the two collapses.

This is due to the fact that the volume of derivatives trading significantly exceeds the volume of trading on the spot market, according to Karkhalev. Leveraged positions and other speculative investors easily put pressure on the price, he says.

"Simply put, churn from exchanges is a great indicator in the long run, but not an indicator that right now bitcoin will start to rise," the analyst added.