The crypto market’s fear gauge hit 15 — deep inside “Extreme Fear” territory — yet the biggest Bitcoin holders quietly moved in the opposite direction. Related Reading: Strategy’s Bitcoin Bet Now $3.35 Billion In The Red As Saylor Tells Investors To Wait Whale Wallets Grow Their Share Of Total Bitcoin Supply According to crypto analytics platform Santiment, wallets holding between 10 and 10,000 BTC increased their collective share of total supply to 68% last week, up from 68% seven days prior. Whales were not buying blindly. Santiment disclosed the accumulation happened as Bitcoin held steady around $71,000 — a price level that large holders appear to have treated as an entry point worth acting on. While that shift may look small on paper, Santiment flagged it as a meaningful directional change after weeks of selling pressure. Bitcoin was trading around $71,470 at the time of the report, up about 6% over the prior week. Source: Santiment The timing stands out. Just over a week earlier, whale behavior told a very different story. Reports indicate that in the two days leading up to March 6, large wallet holders had offloaded 65% of the Bitcoin they accumulated between February 23 and March 3 — a mass exit that coincided with Bitcoin briefly touching $74,000 before pulling back. A Bottom Signal That Depends On What Retail Does Next Santiment says the renewed accumulation by large holders is encouraging, but the picture isn’t complete yet. What analysts are watching now is whether everyday investors — those with smaller wallets — start trimming their holdings. Data shows that historically, Bitcoin has tended to hit its floor not when big money walks away, but when ordinary buyers give up and sell. “Markets rarely reward the majority consensus immediately,” Santiment said in its weekly report. If retail participation stays elevated or keeps climbing, analysts say that could signal more downside ahead rather than a recovery. That caution is reinforced by on-chain analyst Willy Woo, who recently said Bitcoin remains “solidly in the middle of its bear market” when viewed through a long-range liquidity lens — a read that cuts against any near-term optimism. Related Reading: Bitcoin Climbs Back To $73,000 As Short Squeeze Wipes Out $246M In Futures Bets ETF Inflows Offer A Counterpoint To Bearish Sentiment Not everything in the market is pointing down. US spot Bitcoin ETFs posted their first five-day inflow streak of 2026, pulling in roughly $767 million across the week. That kind of sustained institutional interest is harder to dismiss, and it adds a layer of complexity to what is otherwise a cloudy short-term outlook. Whether whale accumulation marks the start of a sustained recovery or just a brief pause in a longer slide will likely depend on how retail investors behave in the days ahead. Santiment says it wants to see small wallet holdings decline while large wallet positions continue rising — the classic pattern of coins moving from uncertain hands into more committed ones. For now, that shift has started. Whether it holds is another question. Featured image from Shutterstock, chart from TradingView
