According to Bitcoiner Willy Woo, Bitcoin’s sluggish price performance this cycle may be linked to its oldest whales, who are offloading large holdings onto the market. Woo noted that it now takes more than $110,000 in new capital to absorb every Bitcoin they sell.
“BTC supply is heavily concentrated among OG whales who peaked their holdings back in 2011,” Woo explained in a post on X Sunday, adding that many of them acquired their coins for $10 or less.
“The gap in cost basis, combined with the size of their holdings and their pace of selling, creates a massive drag on price appreciation, as ever-larger amounts of fresh capital are required to push Bitcoin higher,” Woo said.
Whale Selling Sparks Bitcoin Flash Crash to $112K
The crypto community has attributed Bitcoin’s $45 billion market cap wipeout on Sunday to a longtime whale shifting funds from BTC into Ether.
Over the past week, the whale reportedly rotated more than $2 billion worth of Bitcoin into Ether, sparking a wave of sell orders across the market.
The move triggered a flash crash that sent Bitcoin tumbling nearly 2.2% — from $114,666 at 7:31 pm UTC to $112,546 within nine minutes — before bottoming at $112,174 by 8:16 pm UTC, according to CoinGecko.
Ether wasn’t spared either, plunging 4% from $4,937 to $4,738 during the same window. Both BTC and ETH later clawed back roughly half of the losses from the sudden drop.
Data from Blockchain.com shows that a crypto whale has been moving large amounts of Bitcoin to the decentralized perpetuals platform Hyperliquid since Aug. 16, transferring 24,000 BTC ($2.7 billion) across six transactions over the past nine days.
Of that total, 18,142 BTC — roughly $2 billion — has already been sold, with nearly all of it converted into 416,598 ETH, according to crypto analyst MLM. The analyst also noted that the whale appears linked to additional wallet addresses funneling Bitcoin into Hyperliquid to accumulate more Ether.
So far, 275,500 ETH (about $1.3 billion) has been staked, signaling that the whale’s move into Ether may be part of a longer-term strategy.
Whale’s Profitable ETH Rotation Strategy Linked to Market Crash
According to analyst MLM, the whale also opened long positions totaling 135,263 ETH on Hyperliquid, pushing its overall exposure to 551,861 ETH — valued at more than $2.6 billion. By timing these trades ahead of other fast-moving participants, the whale reportedly secured a $185 million profit on the ETH/BTC pair.
The value of those long positions rose as the market initially responded positively to the whale’s spot ETH purchases. However, once the whale began closing out the longs, traders caught on to the strategy, triggering a wave of position reversals and a cascade of sell orders, MLM explained on Telegram.
“He effectively frontran the people who were trying to frontrun him.”
More Bitcoin could be offloaded
Sani, the founder of TimechainIndex.com, pointed out on X that the whale still controls 152,874 BTC spread across multiple wallet addresses.
He added that the funds were originally sourced from the crypto exchange HTX (formerly Huobi) about six years ago and had remained untouched until Aug. 16.
Another Whale Swapped Bitcoin for Ether Last Week
Last Thursday, another Bitcoin whale sold 670 BTC — worth about $76 million — to open a long position in ETH, underscoring the growing trend of whales rotating out of Bitcoin and into Ether.
Since hitting a low of $1,471 on April 9, ETH has surged 220%, catching up to Bitcoin and Solana, which led the initial leg of the current bull cycle.
