In brief
- A Bitcoin address holding over $50 million in the leading cryptocurrency moved some of its stash on Thursday.
- It was the first time since 2012 BTC had been moved from the address, blockchain data shows.
- The movements come as a number of large crypto holders have made transactions.
An address holding 479 Bitcoin—worth over $52 million at today's prices—moved a chunk of its BTC after 13 years of dormancy, blockchain data shows.
The address, which hadn't moved the coins since 2012, but had received small amounts of BTC over the years, transferred over 80 BTC, worth $8,883,067, to new addresses.
The movements follow several others by large Bitcoin holders in recent months, including multiple whales holding more than 1,000 BTC, with some of these investors exchanging BTC for Ethereum, but others simply liquidating their positions.
On August 29, a major Bitcoin holder deposited 2,000 Bitcoin—worth more than $216 million—to Hyperliquid's exchange and methodically sold it into Ethereum, according to data from network block explorer Hypurrscan.
Earlier in the month, a whale moved roughly 670 BTC, worth $75 million at current prices, and split it among four wallets to open leveraged long positions on Ethereum, while another whale moved 3,000 BTC worth over $349 million after 10 years of "HODLing."
And in July, a mysterious Bitcoin whale moved 80,000 BTC after holding the coins for 14 years. In this last episode, institutional crypto exchange Galaxy Digital said that it was tasked with executing the sale—"one of the largest notional Bitcoin transactions in the history of crypto on behalf of a client."
Whales are not always individual investors but can also be companies that participated in mining crypto early in its history.
When whales awaken, selling pressure sometimes follows as markets expect the entity to start cashing in on their holdings. Some experts have said that selling pressure from big holders has helped prevent any massive price fluctuations.
Bitcoin was recently trading at under $110,000, according to cryptocurrency markets data provider CoinGecko, after dropping by more than 2% over the past 24 hours.
The leading cryptocurrency by market capitalization has fallen nearly 12% since reaching an all-time high of $124,128 last month. BTC has hovered between $110,000 and $120,000 for most of the past two months.
In a Myriad prediction market, nearly 70% of respondents expect Bitcoin to fall to $105,000 instead of reaching $125,000, the latter of which would surpass its all-time record high.
(Disclosure: Myriad is a prediction market and engagement platform developed by Dastan, parent company of an editorially independent Decrypt.)