What Is a Fish?

A fish, or minnow, is someone who holds insignificant amounts of cryptocurrencies, often at the mercy of whales who move the market up and down.

The actions of minnows are unlikely to significantly affect market share — but this can change as a minnow’s holdings increase. 

Once they increase the minnow can become a dolphin and ultimately reach whale status. The change in status to dolphin or whale means these players can significantly affect cryptocurrency prices. 

For example, Bitcoin dolphins can be defined as the segment of players who place orders of 1,000 BTC or more on cryptocurrency exchanges. 

Bitcoin whales are usually hedge funds or huge institutional giants who place massive orders of amounts bigger than those placed by dolphins. 

Notable examples of BTC whales include Tesla and MicroStrategy to name a few.

Orders placed by whales are usually handled through special arrangements via exchanges and typically cannot be seen by standard retail traders. 

The cryptocurrency movements of BTC whales can significantly impact the BTC market. 

BTC whales lead to increased volatility, outsized moves and/or reduced liquidity in the BTC market. 

It is worth noting BTC whales set the tone for minnows to speculate on the future direction of cryptocurrency prices. 

This can cause a dangerous cycle where the price of cryptocurrencies become disconnected with fundamental drivers of cryptocurrencies.