Dogecoin ($DOGE) whales have been moving large amounts of the meme-inspired cryptocurrency as monitoring services have found more than $400,000 million worth of it moved on-chain amid an ongoing crypto market downturn.
According to data from whale monitoring service Whale Alert,first spotted by Daily Hodl, Dogecoin whales have moved $410 million worth of the meme-inspired cryptocurrency across a series of transactions, with seemingly no transaction going to a wallet associated with a cryptocurrency exchange.
As no funds went to cryptocurrency trading platforms, it isn’t clear whether the whales are trying to divest their DOGE holdings, or whether they’re moving them for some other reason. The movements come amid a wider cryptocurrency market rout that saw the price of the flagship cryptocurrency Bitcoin drop from around $20,000 to $16,000 at the time of writing.
Cryptocurrency prices have been falling as after a leaked balance sheet of Alameda Research showed the firm’s collateral heavily relied on FTX’s FTT and Solana-based altcoins with low liquidity, crypto exchange Binance announced it was selling the FTT holdings that it had after leaving an equity investment in the exchange.
Binance’s announcement coupled with the balance sheet leak triggered a bank run on the trading platform, which revealed it was unable to cover users’ withdrawals, despite its CEO Sam Bankman-Fried saying it had users’ funds numerous times.
According to CrypotCompare’s deep dive into FTX’s insolvency, FTX saw outflows of 19,947 BTC, worth over $340 million, on November 7, the largest figure since September 10, 2021 when the exchange recorded more than 45,000 BTC outflows.
As a result of FTX’s crisis, crypto lender BlockFi has suspended withdrawals and won’t be “able to operate business as usual” given the bank run on FTX and the lack of clarity as to what is happening with the cryptocurrency exchange.
The price of the meme-inspired cryptocurrency recently surged after Tesla and Space X CEO Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter. Musk is a well-known $DOGE supporter that has hinted at using the meme-inspired cryptocurrency on the platform for some of its features. Tesla, for example, accepts $DOGE payments.
Notably, leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which invested $500 million to support Musk’s takeover, has recently launched a ‘Bluebird Index’, which is a cryptocurrency index that tracks the performance of its own native token, $BNB, as well as that of Dogecoin ($DOGE) and a little-known cryptocurrency called Mask Network ($MARK). The name and constituents of the index drew attention on social media, with several users claiming Binance is hinting at the coins that will be a part of a future Twitter integration into Web3.
During a press conference at the 2022 Web Summit in Lisbon, Binance’s CEO detailed that the firm is a “minority investor” that wants to be “as supportive as possible” with Twitter. CZ added that in talks with Musk, he mentioned using Dogecoin on the microblogging platform.
As CryptoGlobe reported, search interest for DOGE exploded ahead of a 10,000% price rally last year, with influencers associated with the WallStreetBets subreddit calling for the meme-inspired to cryptocurrency to surge to $1 being part of the reason for the search explosion, along with jokes made by Tesla CEO Elon Musk around the cryptocurrency. $DOGE’s price has since plunged to now change hands at $0.13.
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