Bitcoin Almost Plunged, Deepwater Bombs Dropped into the Cryptocurrency Circle
Digital asset giant Galaxy Digital suddenly announced at the end of July: it has just completed an enormous sale of 80,000 Bitcoins for a Bitcoin 'ancient whale,' with a total value exceeding $9 billion.
This transaction set a new record for the largest single transaction in cryptocurrency history, but what was even more shocking was the surprisingly calm market reaction, with Bitcoin's price only briefly dropping by 3%, rebounding within hours to $119,000, even $5,000 higher than before the sale.
This seemingly ordinary capital flow has torn open a power transition in the Bitcoin world that has been brewing for 14 years. #BTC
However, Galaxy Digital resolved the crisis with a 'whale fall silent' strategy:
Breaking the sale into multiple transactions, with 14,000 flowing to Binance, 8,975 entering Bitstamp, 7,420 sent to Bybit, and 7,150 transferred to OKX;
The remaining 30,400 were directly connected to institutional buyers like BlackRock through over-the-counter (OTC) trading, avoiding the impact of public market order books;
All transactions were completed within 3 hours, with an average slippage controlled within 0.3%, a textbook example of large-scale trading.
The reason the market did not crash is that the underlying logic of Bitcoin has already turned upside down.
Five years ago, a $500 million sale could trigger a 30% plunge; whereas this time, with a $9 billion sale, the market merely shrugged its shoulders.