In the days immediately following the collapse of cryptocurrency firms FTX and Terraform Labs, there was an increase in the amount of trading activity taking place on major exchanges, according to a report published by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

According to a report published by the BIS on Feb. 20 and titled “Crypto Shocks and Retail Losses,” following the bankruptcy announcement of Terra and FTX, the number of daily active users on some exchanges such as coin base and Binance “increased considerably.” This discovery was made despite the fact that the prices of Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and a variety of other cryptocurrencies fell in 2022. The bank gave the appearance that “customers wanted to weather the storm” by changing their money on stablecoins and other tokens that probably didn’t look so bleak at the time. This was done to give the bank the impression that “customers were looking to weather the storm.”

To the contrary, the BIS reported that whales on the aforementioned exchanges “likely cashed in at the expense of smaller holders” by reducing their BTC reserves as retail investors bought up cryptocurrencies. This occurred when the whales reduced their BTC reserves when retail investors bought cryptocurrencies. This took place when the whales sold their BTC holdings while regular investors bought bitcoin. The financial institution said its experts had analyzed the number of times bitcoin trading apps were downloaded. Assuming that each user bought $100 worth of bitcoin for the first month and every month thereafter, they found that roughly 75% of users had downloaded an app when the bitcoin price was above $20,000. This was determined assuming that each user bought $100 worth of bitcoins in the first month.