Most new cryptocurrency investors fear whale accounts because of their potential to suddenly influence the market and throw off everyone’s plans. So, they are keenly watched as most of these whale accounts are held by anonymous persons or groups. Recently, an anonymous whale account moved nearly $112 million (roughly Rs. 839 crores) worth of Ethereum to another anonymous crypto wallet. The transaction was made around 10:30 IST last night. Ethereum has lost some value over the past few hours. However, it would be too soon to say that the transaction had some role in this decline.
When compared to its value over the past 24 hours, Ethereum price in India was down by 1.20 percent. It was trading at $3,822 (roughly Rs. 2.86 lakhs) on Tuesday morning.
Etherscan, an analytics platform, identified the crypto wallet that sent Ethereum as 0xa59e84f0b7afd006a6ab61974f4c4df7f7d259f1. It said the value of the coins sent amounted to $111,966,629 (roughly Rs. 838 crores) and the mysterious account to which the coins were sent had the wallet address: 0xe31d2d6c037762ebb9437513fbdae2df8390ed4e.
There are many whale accounts operating in the cryptocurrency market. Some of them identify themselves and some do not. Usually, big companies invest in cryptocurrencies and hold them as reserves. But there could also be some early investors who invested in cryptocurrency and now their investment has grown manifold. Market watchers pay attention to whale accounts to get an idea of how a move by one or more whale accounts could influence the market. For instance, If the whale decides to exit this Ethereum position, it would create enough pressure on Ethereum to lose value. It takes about $15 million (roughly Rs. 112 crores) to $30 million (roughly Rs. 224 crores) of selling pressure to bring Ethereum’s price down by 2 percent.
The move by this Ethereum Whale has come at a time when the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation was increasing its dominance in the crypto market. Though it was behind the market leader Bitcoin, Ethereum is still considered to be the only coin that has the potential to pose a serious challenge to Bitcoin.
Cryptocurrency is an unregulated digital currency, not a legal tender and subject to market risks. The information provided in the article is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, trading advice or any other advice or recommendation of any sort offered or endorsed by NDTV. NDTV shall not be responsible for any loss arising from any investment based on any perceived recommendation, forecast or any other information contained in the article.