A common rumor about Dogecoin is that a large portion of Dogecoin is held by the wallets of a private investor, the so-called "whale". In reality, many of the top Dogecoin wallets are cold and hot wallets owned by exchanges or brokers, so they are actually thousands or even hundreds of thousands of Dogecoin.
To someone who is good at blockchain analysis, many of these wallets look like wallets managed by trading platforms, because the activity and volume patterns they present reflect the typical characteristics of cryptocurrency exchanges or brokers holding large amounts of collateral. In particular, the Dogecoin community has identified which exchanges and brokers are the holders of several of the largest wallets, including the famous "whale" account that holds 30% of Dogecoin. This was discovered through investigations by some community members, such as tracking clues such as exchanges transferring and receiving payments to private wallets. In fact, this famous and worrying whale wallet, which contains hundreds of thousands of retail investors holding Dogecoin, was split into multiple wallet addresses in October and November 2021.
Sometimes, users of these exchanges and brokers voluntarily store their Dogecoins in the custody services provided by these platforms. Sometimes, they have to do so because the platforms may no longer allow them to withdraw their Dogecoins and put them into their own cold wallets. Whenever this happens, the Dogecoin community will persistently ask these platforms to support withdrawal of Dogecoins. In the past few months, more and more platforms that have encountered such problems have allowed users to withdraw their Dogecoins.
It is very important to carry out some community education so that everyone understands the benefits of using decentralized and non-custodial wallets, which is also an obligation that everyone should strive to do, because they are a core element of a permissionless and decentralized cryptocurrency. Similarly, it is important to realize that this is also an important issue related to the maturity of the Dogecoin ecosystem: more and better solutions for holding Dogecoin yourself will be realized.
After all, as the saying goes: not your keys, not your Dogecoins.
