Dormant Ethereum ($ETH) Whale Awakens and Moves $16 Million as Crypto Markets Drop

A previously dormant Ethereum ($ETH) whale has suddenly become active earlier this week as cryptocurrency markets dropped, with transactions moving over 10,000 tokens worth about $16 million seeing the whale nearly empty its wallet.

According to blockchain monitoring service Lookonchain, the whale has moved 10,266 ETH tokens that it acquired by mining Ethereum back in 2017, meaning the whale was dormant for over five years before it moved its funds.

Following its initial transactions, the whale split its Ethereum into several different unknown addresses, with 1,322 ETH worth roughly $2 million being later sent to cryptocurrency trading platform Poloniex.

After the transactions, the Ethereum whale now holds just around $2,000 worth of the cryptocurrency in its wallet. Its transactions came at a time in which the cryptocurrency market has been seeing a steep correction, with the price of BTC and ETH dropping roughly 5% over the last few days.

As CryptoGlobe reported, Chainlink whales have recently moved tens of millions of dollars worth of the cryptocurrency as well, at a time in which the project was integrated into Coinbase’s layer-2 solution Base. It was the largest on-chain transaction spike for the decentralized oracle project in the last 90 days.

According to on-chain analytics firm Santiment, three large LINK transactions, worth around $80 million, all went through within minutes of each other, as LINK whales started moving their funds.

Blockchain tracking service, Lookonchain, reported on the same day as Santiment that significant LINK transfers were detected in one of the whale addresses mentioned.

Lookonchain revealed that the cryptocurrency was moved from LINK’s non-circulating supply, which consists of tokens set aside by Chainlink, to a whale wallet. The transferred LINK was then moved to Binance, where it could potentially be sold on the open market.

While the motives behind these transactions are not yet clear, they could be a signal of a larger trend in the crypto markets. As prices fluctuate, whales – individuals or entities that hold large amounts of a particular cryptocurrency – may be taking advantage of the volatility to move their assets around.

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