The cryptocurrency market continues to maintain strong growth momentum over the past weekend, with charts mostly colored green. The market capitalization reached 4 trillion USD in the early trading hours of Asia today, up 1.54% in the last 24 hours.
As major cryptocurrencies approach all-time highs, "whales" are making notable trades in the market. The largest trade among these reached an impressive 210 million USD. Below is a detailed analysis of these whale transactions.
Cryptocurrency whales are taking advantage of the bull market through multi-million dollar trades
On-chain data shows that whales are actively trading Ethereum (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency. This interest comes as ETH continues to rise and is just 11.8% away from its all-time high (ATH).
According to information from Onchain Lens, the largest transaction involving a whale or an institutional entity was the purchase of 49,533 ETH worth 210.68 million USD. This transaction was executed through exchanges Galaxy Digital, FalconX, and BitGo.
Currently, this Ethereum whale holds 221,166 ETH, worth 940.73 million USD, distributed across six different wallets. Furthermore, the investment director of Maelstrom, Arthur Hayes, has adopted a more diversified strategy. He has invested a total of 6.85 million USD in assets, including:
1,250 ETH, worth 5.29 million USD.
424,000 Lido DAO (LDO), worth 550,000 USD.
420,000 Ether.fi (ETHFI), worth 510,000 USD.
92,000 Pendle (PENDLE), worth 500,000 USD.
These transactions indicate a significant addition to his cryptocurrency portfolio, primarily focused on Ethereum-based assets.
"On August 2, he believed that BTC would drop to 100,000 USD and ETH would drop to 3,000 USD, so he decided to sell the ETH and tokens in the Ethereum ecosystem that he purchased in July, including ENA, AAVE, LDO, ETHFI, and PEPE," analyst EmberCN stated.
In addition to buying, some whales are also staking their assets to increase profits. One whale, identified by the address 0xA5e…eda0, has been inactive for three years and just staked 4,736 ETH, worth 19.84 million USD.
This whale accumulated ETH at a total cost of about 9.12 million USD around 4-5 years ago, yielding a profit of approximately 10.7 million USD. Similarly, another whale, 0x1fc…aed5, withdrew 2,009 ETH, worth 8.53 million USD, from Binance to stake.
"In the past two months, a total of 10,999 ETH (46.69 million USD) has been withdrawn from Binance to stake on EigenLayer and ETH2.0, currently generating a profit of 13.53 million USD," OnChain Lens added.
The sell-off activity of some whales
Additionally, some whales have made selling transactions. The investment fund of the 1inch team sold 5,000 ETH at an average price of 4,215 USD, converting to 21.07 million USDC.
Furthermore, they sold 6.45 million 1INCH tokens at an average price of 0.28 USD, generating 1.8 million USDC. These transactions yielded a profit of up to 8.36 million USD.
This shows that the team is taking advantage of the current bull market with a profit-taking strategy. The attackers on the Infini stablecoin bank have also sold a large amount of ETH.
"The Infini attacker sold an additional 1,771 ETH (7.44 million USD) at a price of 4,202 USD today. On February 24, they attacked @0xinfini, stealing 49.5 million USD to buy 17,696 ETH at a price of 2,798 USD. As ETH increased in price, they sold 1,770 ETH (5.88 million USD) at a price of 3,321 USD and sent 4,501 ETH (15.03 million USD) to TornadoCash on July 17. They still hold 9,154 ETH (38.85 million USD)," Lookonchain revealed.
Other whale activities
In addition to Ethereum, large investors are also participating in other cryptocurrencies. Whale 0xc9d…642 borrowed 20 million USDC from Aave, transferred this amount to Kraken, and purchased 109.6 WBTC, worth 12.91 million USD.
"This whale is leveraging the purchase of WBTC via Aave through a circular borrowing strategy. They have currently accumulated a total of 603.5 WBTC (71.62 million USD), with an average cost of around 90.382 USD," EmberCN stated.
After a month of inactivity, another cryptocurrency whale withdrew 274.22 Bitcoin (BTC), worth approximately 32 million USD, from Binance. Furthermore, Galaxy Digital transferred 224,000 Solana (SOL), worth approximately 41.12 million USD, to two centralized exchanges, Binance and Coinbase, raising concerns about a sell-off.
Additionally, a smart address withdrew 210,000 LINK from Binance. This address now holds a total of 335,000 LINK. Finally, Nansen CEO Alex Svanevik sent 1 million LDO tokens to Coinbase.
These transactions reflect a combination of profit-taking, long-term staking, and speculative trading among whales and institutions.