A crypto trader who held 22,341 Ether sold their assets just before the market crash, avoiding a potential loss of over $5 million. A few days before the market crashed, an individual who possessed a large amount of Ether, known as a crypto whale, sold their holdings for $41 million.
Whale’s Move Was Made Right on Time
The trade was detected by Lookonchain, a blockchain analysis platform that monitors and shares what it considers to be intelligent trades. A crypto whale transferred 22,341 units of Ether to the Binance exchange Friday, the 18th. Shortly after, they withdrew an estimated $41 million in Tether.
Although the crypto whale lost approximately $1.7 million in value, they were able to avoid further potential losses of more than $5 million when market prices fell. On August 18th, the cryptocurrency market experienced a 6% drop in market capitalization, reaching $1.1 trillion, which is the lowest it has been in at least two months.
Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, fell from approximately $1,820 per token on August 17th to around $1,597 the following day. At the same time, Bitcoin, which accounts for about 50% of the entire cryptocurrency market, fell from roughly $28,400 to $25,649 before recovering to above $26,000 within a few hours.
The price decline occurred after a report by The Wall Street Journal revealed that Elon Musk’s aerospace technology company, SpaceX, had written down $373 million worth of BTC from 2021 to 2022. It is still uncertain whether all of the holdings were sold or not.
The write-down of Bitcoin by the company caused confusion among members of the cryptocurrency community. Some media outlets reported that the entire stash had been sold, while others stated that they were unable to confirm the amount sold based on the wording of the report.
Some users on X (formerly known as Twitter) criticized Musk on the platform, calling him “paper hands,” a term used to describe individuals who are unable to hold onto their cryptocurrency for the long term.
