Private Bitcoin transactions — using a process called CoinJoin — have tripled since 2022 as a result of big Bitcoin accumulators accelerating their purchases, according to CryptoQuant.
These Bitcoin whale addresses are primarily linked to spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds, MicroStrategy and custodial wallets, according to CryptoQuant’s Ki Young Ju, who said in a Dec. 26 X post that whales “frequently use privacy transactions” to transfer their funds to new institutional investors.
CoinJoin transactions pool inputs and outputs from several parties in a way that obfuscates who might own an unspent transaction output.
Young Ju shut down the idea that CoinJoin transactions are mostly used by hackers to launder stolen funds, noting that Chainalysis reported $2.2 billion in hacking losses in 2024, which accounted for only 0.5% of Bitcoin’s $377 billion in realized cap inflows.
Number of Bitcoin CoinJoin transactions since 2012. Source: CryptoQuant
While publicly listed firms must disclose their holdings, Young Ju said there remain unidentified Bitcoin whales that have accumulated up to 420,000 Bitcoin, worth over $40 billion.
“Who are these whales?” Young Ju asked.
Some commenters on the post wondered if a nation-state is discreetly building a Bitcoin reserve behind closed doors, while others speculated it may be a sanctioned country trying to mitigate sanction risks.
Russia recently passed legislation authorizing foreign trade in Bitcoin and other crypto assets.
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CoinJoin’s potential for misuse has captured the attention of law enforcement around the world, including United States authorities, who arrested the founders of privacy-focused Bitcoin non-custodial service Samourai Wallet and seized its website in April.
At the time, the US Department of Justice said Samourai’s CoinJoin feature had executed $2 billion in unlawful transactions and facilitated over $100 million in money laundering from dark web markets such as Silk Road and Hydra Market.
Dutch authorities in August 2022 detained Alexey Pertsev, the creator of crypto mixing tool Tornado Cash. He was found guilty of money laundering in May 2024.
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