An ETH whale moved 5,000 ETH worth about $13 million to OKX on August 12. They had acquired these assets in 2014 during ETH’s ICO for just $0.31 a pop. With that transfer, this whale has moved 48,500 ETH, or $154 million, in the past 35 days, according to data from Etherscan.
A whale is a colloquial term used by those in crypto circles to refer to a user holding massive amounts of crypto in their wallets.
This user’s wallet address, a GnosisSafe one, moved the funds to OKX’s deposit address “0x6eb6ae5f1027e190adcc7b66d3aa8f14a7677faf.” The identity of the one behind the transfers remains unknown. They still hold 15,600 ETH, translating to $41 million, in their GnosisSafe wallet.
Most often, moving large sums to centralized exchanges leads to holders selling their tokens. However, with ETH, it could mean other things, too. The user could be staking the ETH through the exchange’s staking implementation. Otherwise, they could be diversifying their holdings by trading ETH for other assets.
Nevertheless, asset movements to exchanges, especially in the millions, can add selling pressure. ETH has already witnessed this as asset managers continued to sell the coin in bulk, amounting to the hundreds of millions, preventing it from witnessing expected price rises despite spot ETH ETFs being launched in the US to a well-received investor base. The asset crashed significantly as the effects of Japan’s Nikkei taking its biggest hit since 1987 made their way to the crypto market on top of already experiencing sell pressure due to the constant dumping.
ETH is trading at around $2,700 at the time of writing. Its price is down close to 15% over the past month. The largest crypto, BTC, gained 3% during the same time. Largely, the crypto market is recovering after the crash it experienced not too long ago.
