Major cryptocurrency investors, colloquially known as “whales,” have been accumulating the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, Ethereum ($ETH), adding nearly $500 million worth of it to their stashes over the last few weeks.
According to data shared by popular on-chain analysis service Lookonchain, large cryptocurrency whales have been accumulating the second-largest cryptocurrency over the last few weeks through a series of withdrawals from leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance.
The data shows that a whale wallet that could potentially belong to TRON founder Justin Sun withdrew 4,666 ETH from Binance, worth around $14.9 million, after withdrawing 132,054 ETH from the exchange since April 8, accumulating over $430 million worth of it.
Another whale, identified by its wallet’s initials “0x9EB0,” withdrew 7,182 ETH from the exchange, while another whale identified by “0x4446” withdrew 11,892 ETH from Binance, worth around $37.7 million, to long the cryptocurrency by depositing it on decentralized lending protocol Compound to borrow USDT.
Lookonchain pointed to an additional whale, “0x1958,” that withdrew 5,1818 ETH worth $16.28 million from the leading cryptocurrency exchange before staking the funds with non-custodial liquid restaking protocol Bedrock and DeFi protocol Pendle.
Notably, as reported, a large cryptocurrency whale has lost over $4.5 million after attempting to leverage their long position on Ethereum twice, having had to repay their debt on a decentralized protocol as the price dropped.
The whale’s loss occurred earlier this month, after it first took out a USDT loan on decentralized lending protocol Compound, having to repay later on the funds that it used to purchase more ETH.
The trader then made a second attempt, withdrawing funds from leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance to deposit ETH onto the protocol, which they used to borrow USDT and then subsequently buy more ETH, effectively leveraging their position on the cryptocurrency.
Details of the whale’s strategy reveal that they sold their entire holding of 10,701 ETH (valued at approximately $33 million at the time) on the Binance exchange to cover the debt incurred from their failed long position. This final move resulted in an additional loss of over $4 million.
On Compound, loans are over-collateralized, which means that to take out a loan, users have to put down collateral whose value is superior to the value of the loan itself. In the cryptocurrency space, however, there are several risks as the volatility of cryptocurrency prices could see loans easily become under-collateralized. This could trigger a liquidation.
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