Minnow

In crypto and trading slang, a minnow is someone who holds or trades only a small amount of an asset, too little for their activity to move the market on its own. The word comes from the small freshwater fish and is the opposite of a whale, a holder large enough to shift prices with a single order. It belongs to the informal sea-creature scale that also includes shrimp, crabs, fish and dolphins, with boundaries that vary between analysts and are never official. Minnows are often newer retail participants. Commentators sometimes describe markets as minnows reacting to whales' moves, buying after large holders push prices up and selling in panic during sharp drops. Collectively, however, small holders can matter: blockchain analytics firms track how coins spread among small wallets as a gauge of adoption and how widely ownership is distributed.