An early Ethereum ($ETH) investor has moved a whopping 6,000 ETH, worth nearly %10 million, to popular cryptocurrency trading platform Kraken in a move that could lead to a significant sale of tokens on the market.
According to popular cryptocurrency analysis service Lookonchain, the whale participated in Ethereum’s initial coin offering, where they purchased 254,908 ETH when the cryptocurrency was trading for just $0.31 per token, compared to current prices of around $1,650.
Given Ethereum’s current values, the recent transactions could be the realization of gains above 500,000% over a nine-year period for the investor.
Data from the Ethereum blockchain reveals that the massive whale transaction only cost around $2.8 in transaction fees. While the transaction may appear to suggest a massive entity is cashing out, it’s worth noting the whale’s wallet still has 49,000 ETH in it, worth nearly $80 million.
Throughout the last nine years, this particular Ethereum wallet has sporadically been on the receiving end of minor Ethereum deposits as part of potential dusting attacks, whereby hackers and scammers send small amounts of crypto to these wallets to compromise the anonymity of its operator.
It’s worth noting that the 6,000 ETH transaction to Kraken could also be the whale attempting to start staking the funds with the cryptocurrency exchange to generate yield, although it’s also possible to stake on-chain.
As CryptoGlobe reported, Ethereum recently marked its one-year anniversary of its transition from a Proof-of-Work into a Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm, a move that has helped the network’s circulating supply start dropping and significantly reduced its environmental impact.
Ethereum transactions started burning ETH after the London hard fork, which included the implementation of Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559.
The EIP changed the way transaction fees on the network work. Instead of an auction system, users now pay a base fee for their transaction to be processed by validators, and can alternatively tip them to get their transactions to be processed faster.
This has meant over 980,000 ETH tokens, worth over $1.5 billion, have already been burned, while over 360,000 validators have staked 11.6 million ETH.
Featured image via Unsplash.
