Bitcoin traders followed whale alerts within 15 minutes

Bitcoin traders started buying or selling in the same direction as whale trades after public alerts, with the strongest reaction arriving within 15 minutes. The alerts effectively became a short-term signal for smaller participants, not just a record of what large wallets had done.

Researchers from the Philadelphia Fed, Wharton, and Princeton found the pattern across more than 32,000 alerts issued between 2017 and 2025.