Is Bitcoin Whales Game Now as Retail Investors Disappear?

ETF investors have also been more active lately.

The price of Bitcoin made a notable recovery of around ten thousand dollars this past week, rising from a multi-month low of less than $81,000 to over $93,000 on Friday, where the price was halted and pushed to around $91,000.

As for which type of investors could be behind this surge, on-chain data suggests it’s all about whales now.

Buying whales, side hustle in retail?

Data shared by Crypto Rover comparing whale and retail data indicates that the larger cohort of investors has been much more active recently. In fact, their behavior is linked to the general price movements of the underlying asset in recent weeks, including a sell-off in early October when BTC peaked above $126,000 and fell by $15,000 within days.

Now, however, the data points to significant accumulation efforts as Bitcoin fell $25,000 to below $81,000 in just over a week.

WHALES BUY BITCOIN! 🚨 pic.twitter.com/1s24wjOrYk

— Crypto Rover (@cryptorover) November 28, 2025

At the same time, smaller investors appear to be on the sidelines. The same analyst said they were actually missing for the past year, something also reflected in Google searches.

Bitcoin retailers have essentially done nothing over the past year. 🫣 pic.twitter.com/RfqAdr29Uq

— Crypto Rover (@cryptorover) November 28, 2025

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

ETF investors are back

What could be even more optimistic about BTC’s coming price action is the recent return of investors buying Bitcoin ETFs via spot. Financial institutions were in deep trouble last month, with a significant exodus from all funds, especially BlackRock’s IBIT.

Last week was the first week in green since the beginning of October, albeit in a rather modest way. After the $151 million in net withdrawals on Monday, investors deposited $128.7 million on Tuesday, $21.1 million on Wednesday and $71.4 million on Friday (Thursday was a US holiday).

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