Is Bitcoin Whales’ Game Now as Retail Investors Vanish?

ETF investors have also been more active lately.

Bitcoin’s price staged a notable recovery of around ten grand in the past week or so, surging from a multi-month low of under $81,000 to over $93,000 on Friday, where it was stopped and pushed to around $91,000.

On the question of what type of investors might be behind this increase, on-chain data suggests that it’s all about whales now.

Whales Buying, Retail Sidelines?

Data shared by Crypto Rover, which compares the whale vs retail data, indicates that the larger cohort of investors has been a lot more active lately. In fact, their behavior has been linked to the overall price movements of the underlying asset in the past several weeks, including a selling spree in early October when BTC peaked above $126,000 and dumped by $15,000 in days.

Now, though, the data points to significant accumulation efforts once bitcoin slumped by $25,000 in just over a week to under $81,000.

WHALES ARE BUYING BITCOIN! 🚨 pic.twitter.com/1s24wjOrYk

— Crypto Rover (@cryptorover) November 28, 2025

At the same time, smaller investors appear to be sitting on the sidelines. The same analyst said they have been essentially missing for the past year, something that is also evident from the Google searches.

Bitcoin retail traders have basically done nothing over the past year. 🫣 pic.twitter.com/RfqAdr29Uq

— Crypto Rover (@cryptorover) November 28, 2025

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The worldwide queries for the keywords “bitcoin” and “buy bitcoin” have seen their sporadic and brief spikes over the past year, but the overall data indicates that the interest is nowhere near the heights of the 2017 or the 2021 bull cycles.

ETF Investors Are Back

What could be even more bullish on BTC’s upcoming price actions is the recent return of investors buying through the spot Bitcoin ETFs. The financial vehicles were in a ton of trouble for the past month, with a substantial exodus from all funds, especially BlackRock’s IBIT.

The past week was the first in the green since early October, albeit in a rather modest manner. After the $151 million in net withdrawals on Monday, investors poured in $128.7 million on Tuesday, $21.1 million on Wednesday, and $71.4 million on Friday (Thursday was an official Holiday in the US).

Consequently, the week ended with a minor net inflow of $70.2 million, which is still a lot better than the $1.2 billion taken out during the previous trading week.