Data from San Francisco-based bank startup Chime has recently revealed that Coinbase users seemingly stopped hodling in April, as they withdrew 37 percent more than they deposited, meaning $1.37 were withdrawn for every dollar deposited.
As Fortune reports, bitcoiners seemingly took advantage of April’s bullish trend, which saw BTC rally about 33 percent, to cut their losses after being hit with the bearish trend that saw the flagship cryptocurrency drop from a near $20,000 all-time high to about $6,400 at press time.
While customers of the San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase have been increasingly withdrawing more money since December’s all-time high, April was the first month where the money flowing out actually exceeded the money flowing in as for every dollar deposited, $1.37 were withdrawn.
Later on, in May, deposits outweighed withdrawals once again, as every dollar withdrawn was met with $1.10 deposited. The exchange’s CEO, Brian Armstrong, seemingly hinted at the data, explaining that the cryptocurrency’s prolonged downturn got “rid of the people who are in it for the wrong reasons.
5/ After many years of this, I've come to enjoy the down cycles in crypto prices more. It gets rid of the people who are in it for the wrong reasons, and it gives us an opportunity to keep making progress while everyone else gets distracted.
— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) June 19, 2018
Chime’s data was based on the behavior of roughly 500,000 of its active customers – most aged between 25 and 35. This means that the data likely doesn’t completely reflect the activity of Coinbase’s userbase, which is said to exceed 20 million.
The data Chime brought forth, however, seemingly shows that a new class of cryptocurrency investors was shaken off the market. Those who likely entered out of fear of missing out (FOMO) presumably cut their losses in April when the candles turned green.
This point of view of echoed by Chad Cascarilla, co-founder and chief executive officer of Paxos, a firm operating cryptocurrency exchange ItBit. Cascarilla said:
You have a kind of washing out of momentum investors…investors who were not really taking a longterm point of view.
Other data, taken from a survey conducted by real estate developer Get Living, suggests various cryptocurrency investors are millennials, as the firm’s study found 21 percent of UK millennials would rather put their money in BTC than on real estate.
Many, Cascarille suggested, could’ve just gotten out of their positions because they realized the market would go further south, and preferred to stay out of it. Those who did sell in April, however, made a good move as the cryptocurrency came close to $10,000 that month before continuing its downward path, according to CryptoCompare data.
Per Chime’s CEO Chris Britt, overall money flow patterns show that investors have poor timing. He was quoted as saying:
Unfortunately, it’s human nature that investors often buy at the highest prices and sell at lower prices. While we can’t predict the future value of Bitcoin, I suspect we may look back at the current prices a few years from now and see that these lower prices were a great time to buy.
