A long-time Bitcoin whale, who has been holding BTC for the past seven years, has offloaded part of their stash to take a big bet on Ethereum, joining a growing trend of whales shifting focus to ETH.
On Wednesday, the whale sold 670 BTC worth $76 million and used the proceeds to open four long positions totaling 68,130 ETH, according to Lookonchain.
Prior to the sale, the whale held 14,837 BTC—valued at more than $1.6 billion—originally accumulated from exchanges Binance and HTX over seven years ago.
The move comes just a week after Bitcoin hit a fresh all-time high of $124,128 on Aug. 14, while Ethereum nearly retested its 2021 peak of $4,878.
Whale’s positions declined after the purchase
According to Lookonchain, the whale opened all four Ether positions around the $4,300 level, with most of the holdings placed on 10x leverage and a smaller position of 2,449 ETH on 3x leverage.
However, soon after the entries on Wednesday, Ether’s price slid to a low of $4,080—pushing three of the positions into the red and leaving them just $300 away from their liquidation levels at $3,699, $3,700, and $3,732.
Ether has since rebounded, gaining 2.9% in the past 24 hours, and was trading at $4,287 at the time of writing, per CoinGecko.
Institutions stacking Ether too
Lookonchain reported that three whales panic-sold 17,972, 13,521, and 3,003 ETH during Tuesday’s market dip.
Meanwhile, two institution-linked wallets took the opportunity to accumulate, each adding 9,044 ETH worth a combined $38 million.
BitMine Immersion Technologies, a publicly listed Bitcoin firm, has expanded its treasury with an additional 52,475 ETH, boosting its total holdings to 1.52 million tokens valued at $6.6 billion.
Last month, long-dormant whales shifted their Bitcoin holdings
Two other major Bitcoin whales also shifted large sums of BTC last month, though neither rotated into Ether.
One was a Satoshi-era whale holding 80,201 BTC, who began moving funds to Galaxy Digital after 14 years of dormancy, completing the final transfer on July 16. On the same day, another long-inactive whale reawakened after six years and moved 1,042 BTC—worth $123 million—into a new wallet.
Crypto analyst Willy Woo noted in June that whales holding over 10,000 BTC have been steadily selling since 2017, in response to questions on X about who’s been offloading coins amid rising institutional demand.
Even so, analysts emphasized that OG Bitcoiners cashing out isn’t a bearish signal, as new buyers are quickly stepping in—pointing instead to a sign of a maturing market.
