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Ethereum ICO-era whale address transfers 145,000 ETH weeks before the Merge

The whale transfer has ignited the curiosity of the ETH community, with some calling it dumping and others a staking move

By Shashank Bhardwaj

Image: Shutterstock

An Ethereum wallet from the ICO-era, which participated in the genesis initial coin offering (ICO), saw activity again on August 14 after three years of staying dormant. The wallet obtained 150,000 ETH in 2014.

When Ethereum’s price spiked to $2,000, the whale wallet transferred 145,000 ETH to multiple wallet addresses. The transfers were done in several batches of 5,000 ETH, with some transfers going over 10,000 ETH, too. The total value of these transferred Ether tokens was around $280 million. The whale wallet now has a balance of 0.107 ETH left.


Source: Etherscan, Ethereum ICO-era wallet transactions

The wallet was previously activated in 2019 when 5,000 ETH were sent to the Bitfinex exchange when Ether was at $219. The overall transaction was valued at a few million dollars. This was the second time the wallet had been active since the ICO.

The movement of such a huge amount of ETH from the dormant wallet had the community intrigued. There were two sides to the response. One side called the event a dumping activity prior to the Merge. The Merge will cause Ethereum to transition to the proof-of-stake consensus from the proof-of-work consensus. The transfers were to unknown wallets rather than an exchange like the last time.

Experts cite that even if the move is one about dumping, a selling pressure of $250 million cannot be considered significant enough to bring about a market dump. A part of the community also believes that the whale could be attempting to stake their ETH and become a validator on the about-to-come PoS network and generate passive income.

After the successful merge of the Goerli testnet to the Beacon Chain - the PoS chain that got activated in 2020 - Ethereum’s Merge is scheduled to happen on September 15 now.

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