Ethereum
Whale moves 73,000 ETH to Binance and Ether drops
The price of the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, Ether (ETH), has retreated by around 4% in the last 24 hours. At the time of writing, ETH is priced at $1,173, according to data from CoinGecko. That is, about R$ 6,310 at its current exchange rate in reais.
The price drop is a continuation of the downtrend of the cryptomarket in general. However, in the specific case of Ether, the price pullback also coincides with a massive dumping of tokens by a whale. A major investor in the largest altcoin on the market moved 73,224 ETH to cryptocurrency exchange Binance this Monday (28). In fiat currency, this amounts to around US$85.6 million or more than R$460 million.
The move was revealed by on-chain data researcher Lookonchain this Monday (28). As Lookonchain wrote on its Twitter account, this is the same whale that removed 84,131 ETH ($101 million) from the Curve protocol three days ago:
“Watch out for ETH selling pressure,” Lookonchain warned.
ETH dump on Binance impacts cryptocurrency price
Generally speaking, a large investor transfers a certain cryptocurrency to a centralized exchange when he intends to sell or use the coins as margin in derivatives trading. Therefore, an increase in flows of digital assets to exchanges generally indicates more price volatility and possibly a devaluation in the price of the digital currency in question.
When this whale withdrew 84,131 ETH from the staked ether (stETH) liquidity pool last week, the price of the stETH token dropped to 0.97 ETH – down from the 1 ETH it was supposed to be worth. According to Dune Analytics, right now, stETH is trading at 0.982 against Ether. Namely, it costs around $1,156, down from $1,173 for ETH.
Now, the whale’s new ETH move has also weakened the price of Ether, which today trades more than 76% below the all-time high of $4,878 in November last year.
ETH price chart over the last 24 hours. Source: CoinGecko
Whale also dumps Bitcoins
Just this Monday, Whale Alert reported on his Twitter profile the occurrence of another big movement, only in Bitcoin. According to the alert, 127,351 BTC, worth more than BRL 10 billion, were transferred from crypto exchange Binance to an unknown wallet.
While the reasons are still unclear, some believe the move is related to the exchange’s BTC reserve reorganization. Bitcoin price is currently trading at $16,223 (R$87,380), down more than 2% over the last 24 hours.
