Bitcoin has recently seen its price drop to little over $6,900 after it lost over $400 in only 90 minutes. The flagship cryptocurrency’s plunge notably comes shortly after a whale associated with the now-defunct Silk Road marketplace moved thousands of BTC to crypto exchanges.
As CryptoGlobe reported, a bitcoiner that had been dormant since March 9, 2014 has recently moved its 111,000 BTC and BCH fortune to multiple wallets with little under 1,000 BTC each. A detailed investigation revealed the funds could belong to Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR), the account of the Silk Road’s admin, a Mt Gox user, or a Silk Road vendor.
Reddit user sick_silk, who’s been keeping an eye on the mysterious bitcoin whale, has recently revealed it then proceeded to move part of the funds to leading cryptocurrency exchanges Binance and Bitfinex.
Per the redditor, at least 15,593 BTC (now worth about $108.9 million), about 14% of the whale’s fortune, were moved to Bitfinex and Binance. The funds were transferred to the exchanges throughout 10 days, with 11,100 BTC going to Bitfinex and 4,400 to Binance.
The whale seemingly dumped its funds on said exchanges, as bitcoin is currently trading at $6,932 after falling over 6.06% in the last 24-hour period. The drop erased the cryptocurrency’s gains from last week.
As CryptoGlobe reported the plunge also came at a time in which Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs revealed it was dropping its plan of launching a bitcoin trading desk in the near future. While some analysts believe the bank’s move caused the drop, others claim it was the mysterious whale dumping the funds it had been accumulating on the exchanges.
Notably, the Wall Street giant is still focusing on its crypto custody service, which will likely bring in institutional investors into the market. The firm has been taking baby steps to enter the crypto ecosystem, including hiring crypto trader Justin Schmidt as its head of digital asset markets.
This wouldn’t be the first time a whale dumps a massive amount in a cryptocurrency exchange, causing a flash crash. Last year a “multimillion-dollar” trade saw Ethereum’s price plunge from about $319 to 10 cents in seconds.
Notably the mysterious bitcoin whale is also believed to have moved 210 BTC to cryptocurrency derivatives exchange BitMEX. It’s possible the whale used these to short the cryptocurrency while dumping its 15,500 BTC on Bitfinex and Binance.
