A prominent Bitcoin whale, who has held onto their Bitcoin for seven years, recently sold part of their holdings to initiate a long position in Ether (ETH), aligning with a trend of Bitcoin whales expanding into Ethereum.
This original whale sold 670 Bitcoin (BTC) for $76 million on Wednesday, reallocating those funds to establish four positions totaling 68,130 ETH, as reported by Lookonchain in a post on X on Thursday.
Prior to this sale, the whale possessed 14,837 Bitcoin valued at over $1.6 billion, accumulated through purchases from crypto exchanges Binance and HTX over the past seven years.
This transaction occurred just a week following Bitcoin’s all-time high of $124,128 on August 14, with Ether nearly reclaiming its 2021 all-time high of $4,878.
Whale Positions Declined Post-Purchase
According to Lookonchain, all four of the whale’s Ether positions were opened around the $4,300 mark, primarily utilizing 10x leverage, with a smaller stake of 2,449 Ether on 3x leverage.
However, following the whale’s position openings on Wednesday, Ether’s price fell, reaching a low of $4,080, resulting in three positions falling into the red, just $300 above the liquidation prices of $3,699, $3,700, and $3,732.
Ether has risen by 2.9% in the last 24 hours, as reported by CoinGecko, trading at $4,287 per token at the time of this writing.
Institutions Accumulating Ether as Well
During a market downturn on Tuesday, three whales panic-sold 17,972, 13,521, and 3,003 Ether, as noted by Lookonchain, though other buyers were poised to capitalize on the situation.
Simultaneously, two wallets linked to institutions amassed 9,044 Ether each, totaling $38 million, according to Lookonchain.
BitMine Immersion Technologies, a publicly traded Bitcoin company, has added another 52,475 Ether to its treasury, raising its total holding to 1.52 million tokens valued at $6.6 billion.
Older Whales Liquidated Their Bitcoin Recently
In the previous month, two additional Bitcoin whales moved substantial amounts of BTC but opted not to invest in Ether.
A Satoshi-era Bitcoin whale with 80,201 tokens began transferring its holdings to Galaxy Digital after being inactive for 14 years, making its final transfer on July 16.
Related: Ether trader transforms $125K into $43M, securing $7M post-market downturn
After six years of inactivity, another smaller whale emerged on the same day and moved 1,042 Bitcoin, valued at $123 million, to a new wallet.
Crypto analyst Willy Woo stated in June that whales holding more than 10,000 Bitcoin have been progressively selling since 2017, responding to a question from an X user regarding who has been selling amidst rising institutional interest.
Nevertheless, analysts informed Cointelegraph that veteran Bitcoin holders parting with their assets is not a concern, as new buyers continue to enter the market, indicating positive growth within the ecosystem.
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