Ethereum Whale Wakes Up and Transfers $90 Million to Kraken

An Ethereum (ETH) wallet that had remained inactive for five years surprised the crypto community by reactivating and transferring around $90 million in ETH to the Kraken exchange. Lookonchain detected  the event.

The wallet’s address, classified as a “whale” due to its substantial holdings, initially received 47,260 ETH in 2017, valued at over $11 million at that time. Arkham Intelligence conducted an analysis that revealed the previous transactions from this address were not linked to the cold storage wallets of major exchanges. However, it is worth noting that a past transaction may have connections to an address associated with Cumberland, a prominent trading firm.

An early $ETH whale appears to be selling ETH again after being dormant for 5 years.

The whale deposited all 39,260 $ETH($87.5M) to #Kraken 30 mins ago.

The whale received 47,260 $ETH($11.34M) at ~$240 from June to August 2017.

If sold the whale would make a profit of ~$78M. pic.twitter.com/v0PI4LNTKO

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) December 5, 2023

The transfer of this substantial amount of ETH to Kraken has raised various questions about the wallet holder’s intentions and the potential impact on the Ethereum market. At the time of the transaction, Kraken’s market depth for Ether trading pairs exceeded $5 million. A buy or sell order of this magnitude could influence the market price by at least 2%, leading to speculations about the future direction of the ETH market.

Undoubtedly, the power of these users, often referred to as whales, can be immeasurable at times. The community eagerly awaits to see the impact the future movements of this dormant giant will have on Ethereum.

Ethereum Market Performance

According to the most recent data published on CoinMarketCap, Ethereum (ETH) is currently trading at $2,208 per unit after experiencing a slight decrease of 1.4% in its price in the last 24 hours. It is essential to highlight that both ETH and the overall market saw a significant uptick in the past few hours driven by the momentum of Bitcoin, whose price surged amid expectations for the approval of its ETF.

On the other hand, the market capitalization of ETH also fell by 1.35% and exceeds $265 billion. Meanwhile, its market volume experienced a more substantial drop of approximately 18%, hovering around $11.7 billion.