Over this past weekend the cryptocurrency space saw a significant recovery, with Bitcoin (BTC) briefly topping the $65,000 mark before enduring a correction, and within that period a massive Bitcoin whale resurfaced after a decade of inactivity.
That Bitcoin whale notably moved funds from an address containing around $43.8 million worth of the flagship cryptocurrency from a Bitcoin address that had been dormant for little over 10 years.
The transaction was first spotted by Whale Alert, a whale monitoring service that posts large transactions on the microblogging platform X (formerly known as Twitter). Data from the blockchain shows the whale was last active in 2014, when BTC was trading at around $360 per token. It has appreciated over 17,000% since then.
Movements by these “whales” – institutions or individuals holding massive crypto reserves – are closely watched due to their potential to influence market prices, with the Bitcoin blockchain being open to everyone and allowing for large transactions to be easily monitored.
Speculation on social media swirled about the owner’s motives. Some considered it “suspicious,” while others offered creative explanations, suggesting the owner might have been recently released from prison. It’s worth adding that in Bitcoin’s early days, many adopters were those involved in darknet market buying and selling illicit goods with the cryptocurrency.
The transaction notably comes at a time in which cryptocurrency whales have accumulated nearly 47,000 Bitcoins in the past day worth around $2.9 billion, according to data from on-chain analytics firm CryptoQuant.
The data, shared on the microblogging platform X (formerly known as Twitter) by the company’s founder and CEO Ki Young Ju, shows the balances of cryptocurrency whales last active over the past 24-hour period surged exponentially, with the CEO saying “we’re entering a new era” as a result.
As CryptoGlobe reported some institutions may be among those buying the dip, as BNP Paribas, the second-largest bank in Europe whose asset management arm has over $600 billion in assets under management, has gained exposure to the flagship cryptocurrency Bitcoin via a spot exchange-traded fund.
According to a recent 13F filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) the bank has purchased shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), as first reported by Bitcoin Magazine.
Large institutional investors managing over $100 million in assets have to, every quarter, disclose their holdings via 13F filings and after the successful launch of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the U.S., these filings have been closely watched by industry sleuths.
Notably, an executive at BlackRock has revealed sovereign wealth funds are showing interest in gaining exposure to Bitcoin through its iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) ETF, and could start trading it over the next few months.
Such an investment would show a significantly different attitude towards digital assets. Foreign wealth funds like Kuwait’s Invstment Authority (KIA), the oldest sovereign wealth fund in the world, and Norway’s well-known $1.6 trillion wealth fund, could make ripples in the market with even conservative allocations.
Featured image via Pixabay.
