The cryptocurrency market has just undergone a slight correction, losing 0.49% in the past 24 hours after a volatile weekend. Bitcoin (BTC) dropped to 115,511 USD, while Ethereum (ETH) slid below 4,500 USD.
Amidst market volatility, whales have shown mixed actions: some sell when prices drop, while others accumulate more at low price levels.
Whale trading strategies create market division
Like previous weeks, Ethereum continues to be the most traded altcoin by whales. According to data from Onchain Lens, two new wallet addresses - suspected to belong to the same individual - received over 115 million USD in ETH (25,684 ETH) from FalconX. This large capital flow indicates that this is likely a bulk buying strategy of a major investor.
In parallel, another whale increased its ETH holdings by an additional 3,333 tokens, worth about 14.93 million USD. This new wallet address had previously purchased 9,046.23 ETH from Kraken last weekend.
"A total of 16,872 ETH (approximately 74.99 million USD) has been withdrawn from Kraken, at an average price of 4,444.76 USD," an on-chain analyst noted.
Conversely, another whale deposited 3,492 ETH (equivalent to about 15.57 million USD) to Binance, taking profits with a gain of 17.37 million USD.
"Originally, this whale withdrew 5,800 ETH - worth 10.25 million USD - from Binance two years ago. Currently, this wallet still holds 2,650 ETH, worth 12 million USD," Onchain Lens added.
Another Ethereum whale, with wallet address 0x69b…0e378, has also just realized its profits.
Two months ago, this investor bought 2,437 ETH at an average price of 2,448 USD and transferred all 2,437 ETH to the Binance exchange today (August 18), later withdrawing part of it in Tether (USDT). This move is estimated to have generated a profit of 5.05 million USD.
"This shows that he is not selling everything due to falling prices, or simply wants to keep USDT on the exchange," an analyst commented.
Besides ETH, Chainlink (LINK) is also attracting the attention of 'big players', possibly because this altcoin is going against the general market trend by rising 5.9% in the past 24 hours. During this rally, 4 whales withdrew a total of over 400,000 LINK (equivalent to about 9.82 million USD) from Binance.
Among them, one whale (0x4eb…3d5af) also withdrew an additional 211,346 LINK, worth 5.3 million USD. This shows strong confidence in the long-term potential of Chainlink.
"Currently, this wallet holds 932,640 LINK, worth 23.55 million USD, accumulated in just the past 3 days," Onchain Lens noted.
In another development, the token distribution address of Pump.fun has sent 2.5 billion PUMP tokens to the OKX exchange. Meanwhile, information from the data provider Arkham revealed that a wallet possibly related to investor Rudy Kadoch had transferred about 1.976 million Curve DAO (CRV) to Binance, raising concerns about potential selling pressure on the native token of Curve Finance.
Meanwhile, a newly created wallet withdrew 450 BTC (53.22 million USD) from Binance, marking the strong participation of a new whale - or rebranded - in the market.
Additionally, the co-founder of Sky Protocol (formerly Maker) has also just executed a large transaction. He used 1.77 million ENA to buy back 16.38 million SKY, reflecting a 'token buyback' strategy to strengthen the ecosystem.
"Since the beginning of June, he has used staking profits from SKY (USDS and SPK) along with ENA today, totaling 10.21 million USD, to repurchase 122 million SKY at an average price of 0.0836 USD," EmberCN stated.
Finally, in a rather surprising move, a whale withdrew 1.72 million USDC from Binance and used this money to buy 1.79 million Fartcoin (FARTCOIN).
These transactions demonstrate the proactive role of whales in the market. The concentration of large capital flows into ETH and LINK, along with diverse activities in other tokens, reflects a mix of profit-taking, accumulation, and speculation.
