By
Bhushan Akolkar
April 16th, 2024
Ethereum and Bitcoin dormant whales have turned active after years of inactivity and are moving coins from old to new addresses.
The world’s second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum (ETH) has seen a good run up so far this year in 2023. After shooting past $2,000 by mid-April, the ETH price has come under some selling pressure and is currently trading around $1863 with a market cap of $224 billion. In an interesting development, on-chain data shows that an Ethereum ICO participant has woken up after 7.7 years of dormancy and has just transferred 1 ETH to the new address. Many speculate it is a test transaction happening in block 17110898.
As per the on-chain data provider Lookonchain, the wallet in question has received a total of 2365 Ether (ETH) worth a massive $4.42 billion as of today’s price. During the Ethereum ICO in 2013, one Ether (ETH) was roughly costing $0.31, and its price today is $1,860.
An Ethereum ICO participant woke up after 7.7 years of dormancy and transferred 1 $ETH to a new address.
He received 2,365 $ETH($4.42M currently) at Ethereum Genesis, the ETH ICO price is ~$0.31.https://t.co/hOfBSyml19 pic.twitter.com/yoMoB6vE9n
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) April 24, 2023
Not many details are available regarding the Ethereum whale in question. However, one common trend is that dormant whale transactions have been on the rise recently in the crypto market.
Bitcoin Whale Turns Active after a Decade
Earlier this month on April 21, a Bitcoin whale suddenly turned active after almost a decade of inactivity. The Bitcoin whale transferred a total of 279 bitcoins – worth $7.8 million at the time of the transaction to three separate addresses.
This transaction happened soon after another long-dormant Bitcoin whale transferred a total of 2,071.5 BTC – worth $60.7 million, after nine long years of inactivity.
There’s no specific clarity regarding the recent moves by Bitcoin whales. However, speculations in the market are that these long-time crypto users have been moving old funds to new wallets amid a recent wallet-draining operation that’s allegedly targeting old wallets. Along with the rise of the crypto market, crypto thefts are on the rise simultaneously. Thus, there could be a possibility that dormant whales are looking at other ways of securing their assets.
The Bitcoin price has also seen a strong pullback of over 9% over the last week and is currently trading around at $27,349 and a market cap of $529 billion. However, Bitcoin optimists are not losing hope and looking forward to other major events such as the Bitcoin halving scheduled ahead next year in mid-2024.
Some analysts have also raised the Bitcoin price target to $50,000 in the next year. Jamie Douglas Coutts, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst said:
“Bitcoin cycles bottom around 12-18 months prior to the halving and this cycle structure looks similar to the past ones, albeit many things have changed – while the network is vastly stronger, Bitcoin has never endured a prolonged severe economic contraction”.
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