{"slug":"wallet-labels","term":"Wallet Labels","category":"Whales & On-Chain","definition":"Wallet labels are identity tags attached to blockchain addresses — exchange cold wallets, ETF custodians, market makers, funds, hackers, treasuries. Labels turn raw transfers into readable flows: the same 5,000 BTC move means nothing between two Binance wallets and plenty when a fund deposits to sell. Every on-chain metric depends on them.","street":"Without labels, on-chain data is just money moving between strangers.","depth":["Providers build labels three ways: clustering heuristics (addresses that spend together belong together), tagging exchange deposit addresses from known flows, and manual attribution from hacks, court filings, and public disclosures. Coverage is decent on BTC and ETH majors, patchy everywhere else — and providers disagree with each other more than most dashboards admit.","Every netflow, reserve, and whale metric inherits label errors — which is how a re-tagged cold wallet becomes a fake '$2B outflow' that trends for a day. And the players worth tracking know they're tracked: funds rotate to fresh addresses precisely so the label map goes stale before they sell. Before trading any wallet-based story, check it against a second label source; if the label is the whole thesis, pass."],"live":{"label":"See who's behind the flows","href":"/tools/whale-alert"},"related":["whale","exchange-netflow","otc-desk"]}