The sudden movements of this cryptocurrency fortune have left analysts perplexed
A whale that held a fortune in Bitcoin for 14 years began, on Friday, to move its enormous stock of 80,000 BTC — valued at $8.6 billion (R$ 46 billion) at current prices.
The coins began to be transferred in batches of 10,000 BTC, or about $1 billion in Bitcoin, on the morning of Friday (4), according to data from Arkham Intelligence. By 11 a.m. Eastern Time, the $8.6 billion in crypto had already been transferred to new addresses.
Attentive observers of the blockchain quickly pointed out on X that the movements came from an entity that had received these coins in 2011 through 'coinbase' transactions — the first transaction of a block created by miners. When miners create new blocks on the blockchain, they are rewarded with newly created digital coins.
Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant, told Decrypt: 'It is the largest daily movement of coins aged 10 years or more in history.' He added that the previous record for a whale that held crypto for so long was a transaction of 3,700 BTC — something that pales in comparison to the current movement.
CryptoQuant analyst J.A. Maartun wrote on X: 'In eight years analyzing Bitcoin, I've never seen anything like this,' noting that the entity linked to the Bitcoin addresses that conducted the transactions on Friday had held around 200,000 BTC at one point.
Conor Grogan, director of the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S., Coinbase, posted on X that the entity linked to the addresses held a fortune of $21.5 billion — making it one of the five largest Bitcoin holders in the history of cryptocurrencies.
Grogan added that, if he had to guess, the Bitcoin wallet likely belongs to an 'OG miner', meaning someone who started mining BTC in the early days of the network.
In the crypto universe, a whale is someone who holds a large amount of coins and digital tokens. A Bitcoin whale is typically defined as an entity that owns 1,000 BTC — equivalent to $108 million at current prices — or more.
Experts previously told Decrypt that, while it is difficult to say for sure, whales are not always individual investors; they can also be companies that got involved with crypto mining in the early years. However, considering that the stock of coins moved today was acquired years before the industrial mining era of Bitcoin, it is impossible to say whether the assets belong to a single person or a group.
Bitcoin was trading at $108,157 on the morning of Saturday (5), according to CoinGecko, with a slight decrease of 0.3% in the last 24 hours. The leading cryptocurrency has accumulated a depreciation of about 3.3% compared to its all-time high of $111,814 recorded in May.
When whales start moving their coins after years of 'HODLing', the market tends to react, as investors expect an imminent sale — and consequently, downward price pressure.
