Bitcoin Whale, Sleeping for 11 Years, Awakens! Is There a Sale?

An early investor who bought Bitcoin at $4.92 in April 2012 has become active again today. The sudden movement sparks debate over the giant whale’s purpose.

Bitcoin whale moves $37 million after 11 years

Today, a whale who bought BTC in 2012 transferred $37 million worth of cryptocurrency to new wallets. The whale’s dismemberment of the million-dollar BTC reserve sparks debate over what its purpose might be.

In the first transaction, the giant investor moved all of his 1,037.42 Bitcoins to a new address, “bc1qtl” earlier in the day. “Whale bought 1,037.42 BTC on April 11, 2012 when the price was $4.92,” Lookonchain wrote in its report. This whale made its first investment when BTC started trading on exchanges years after its launch in 2009.

Such large movements from early participants are typically rare. This move could mean that the investor is preparing to sell, stake on an exchange, or diversify their portfolio.

This year, some legacy whales continue to transfer well-established cryptos like Bitcoin (BTC) or Ether (ETH) to exchanges. In April, at least four wallets moved millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin to exchanges or other wallets.

What are the whales preparing for?

At this point, Glassnode discovered last month that different subsets of BTC whales exhibit various behaviors when the price encounters resistance in the $30,000 psychological zone. The whales holding 1,000 to 10,000 BTC took the bullish approach, increasing their balances by around 33,800 BTC. Likewise, whales with over 100,000 BTC increased their holdings by 6,600 BTC.

However, wallets holding 10,000 to 100,000 BTC showed a bearish trend, reducing their balance by 49,000 BTC. Glassnode, therefore, marked the period under review with a “net drop of only -8.7k BTC.”

However, while the overall balance change has remained relatively stable, the report noted that whales may be moving money among themselves on crypto exchanges as there are “significant changes taking place both internally and through currency flows.” To test his theory, Glassnode evaluated BTC’s Whale Reshuffle metric over the 30-day moving average for two whale subdivisions: those with more than 10,000 BTC and those with 1,000 to 10,000 BTC. This led Glassnode to conclude:

This suggests that whales have recently exhibited a relatively neutral balance shift, with much of their recent activity being rearranged through exchange.

Bitcoin transfers reach crisis times

While the BTC to MVRV ratio is still in the profitable territory, all the BTC whale groups have sent varying amounts of their holdings to crypto exchanges for forward selling. Glassnode found that its recent rally resulted in a “pretty significant” increase in whale entry volumes above 16,300 BTC daily:

This is a whale dominance of 41% of all stock market entries, comparable to both the LUNA crash (39%) and the failure of FTX (33%).

Over the past five years, net flows from whale to stock market have generally remained around ±5,000 BTC per day. However, there has been a steady increase in whale entries into exchanges in June and July of this year, with a bias towards inflows ranging from 4,000 to 6,500 BTC per day.