Some of the Ethereum whales that have been dormant for six years are back on the move.
Their wallets transferred 135,548 ETH, worth nearly $400 million, to Bitfinex just hours before the cryptocurrency market crashed.
These wallets date back to January 2019, and became active shortly before the price crashed.
According to Spot on Chain data, the value of these coins when they were purchased was around $20.8 million.
If they were sold at current prices, the whales would make a huge profit of 1,817%, or just over $378 million.
The first wallet (0xfdfe…06def3) deposited 77,736 ETH worth over $193 million 11 hours before the market crash, while the second wallet (0x693b…98dee8) transferred 57,813 ETH an hour later, worth $144.3 million.
The motivations for these moves remain unclear:
Was it part of a deliberate strategy or just a coincidence?
Shortly after these transfers, the cryptocurrency market experienced a sharp decline, with Ethereum falling to $2,250 and Bitcoin temporarily dipping below $92,000.
The total market liquidation volume was over $2 billion, with $1.58 billion of long positions being written off in the last 24 hours alone.
