A mysterious cryptocurrency whale has recently sent tremors through the digital assets community after transferring 2,500 Ether ($ETH), equivalent to $4.6 million, into an address that no one controls, meaning the funds were burned.
This was notably not the only eyebrow-raising move from the mysterious cryptocurrency wallet, identified by its Ethereum name service (ENS) address nd4.eth, which according to Arkham Intelligence, also burned three top-tier non-fungible tokens (NFTs), namely a Bored Ape Yacht Club, a Mutant Ape Yacht Club, and a Bored Ape Kennel Club. These tokens had a collective value of nearly $89,000.
As Arkham Intelligence noted, the tokens are now completely unrecoverable, but why the cryptocurrency whale would move their funds to these burn addresses isn’t clear. Adding to the mystery, nd4.eth has also burned $18,000 worth of altcoins, including $APE and $GMX.
Such moves are even more perplexing given the crypto address’s established trading record, which showcases an impressive $25 million counterparty volume with Uniswap and $20 million with Binance.
Arkham’s deep dive into the address’s history unveiled that nd4.eth had received a considerable 5,5K ETH in December 2022 from another enigmatic address, enditall.eth. Yet, rather than turning these funds to ash, nd4.eth opted to channel them to Arbitrum and invested in GMX.
Partly as a result of these burns, nd4.eth has seen its once impressive cache of 11,058 ETH, valued at over $17 million, fall to a balance that’s now at a mere 0.00254 ETH, barely enough to transact on the cryptocurrency’s network.
The burns occurred at a time in which Ethereum’s adoption keeps on growing, with the number of addresses with a balance of least one wei, the smallest unit of ETH, now surpassing the 100 million mark.
These addresses numbered around 20 million in 2019, escalating to nearly 50 million by early 2021, right on the cusp of a bullish wave that took Ethereum to an unprecedented price of almost $4,900, according to market data.
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