Whale
An entity holding a large enough position to meaningfully influence a crypto asset's price through their trading activity.
A 'whale' is any entity — individual, fund, exchange, or protocol — whose holdings are large enough that their buying or selling has a noticeable market impact. The threshold is relative: in a small-cap token, $100,000 is whale-sized; in Bitcoin, it typically means holdings of 1,000+ BTC.
Whale on-chain activity is actively tracked by services like Whale Alert and Nansen. Large transfers to exchanges are often interpreted as preparation to sell; transfers from exchanges to cold wallets suggest long-term holding. These signals are not always reliable but are widely followed.
The concentration of wealth in crypto (Bitcoin's Gini coefficient is higher than most countries) means a small number of early holders and institutional investors have disproportionate influence over market dynamics and, in some cases, governance.