Massive Bitcoin whale buys $200M in BTC, another wakes up after 8 years

A massive Bitcoin whale wallet holding has just added $200 million worth of Bitcoin to its position after selling over 11,400 Bitcoin over the last few months — coinciding with a recent rebound for the original cryptocurrency. 

The Bitcoin whale added 2,400 Bitcoin — worth over $200 million — to their stash on March 24, blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence said in an X post.

Data shared by the firm shows that despite some sales in February, after the latest purchase, the whale holds over 15,000 Bitcoin in its wallet, worth over $1.3 billion, at current prices.

“A $1 billion Bitcoin Whale just withdrew $200 million of Bitcoin this morning from Binance,” Arkham said.

The whale started acquiring Bitcoin five days ago after selling off its stash when Bitcoin’s price was between $100,000 and $86,000 in February. CoinGeck data shows on Feb. 1, Bitcoin was worth over $104,000, but it steadily declined to hit a low of $78,940 on Feb. 28. 

Source: Arkham Intelligence

The whale movement comes amid a recent Bitcoin price rebound. 

Bitcoin has been trading $81,000 and $88,000 in the last seven days, according to CoinGecko, with a price surge of 3% on March 24, distancing itself from its $76,900 low on March 11.

Bitcoin whale wakes from slumber 

At the same time, another Bitcoin whale has woken up after eight years of dormancy, moving over 3,000 Bitcoin, worth $250 million, in one transaction on March 22.

“His Bitcoin stack went from $3M in early 2017 to over $250M today — and he’s held Bitcoin on one address for over 8 years,” Arkham said in a March 22 X post. 

Another huge Bitcoin holder, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager with approximately $11.6 trillion in assets under management, has been steadily accumulating more Bitcoin over the last week as well, according to Arkham.

Across 15 transactions, the asset manager bought an extra 4,054 Bitcoin, giving it a total stash of 573,878, worth over $50 billion, data on Bitbo’s Bitcoin treasury tracker shows. 

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) also led a rally of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the US, snapping a five-week net outflow streak by clocking a net inflow of $744.4 million. 

The bulk of net inflows came from BlackRock’s iShares, which recorded $537.5 million, followed by Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) with $136.5 million.

Bitcoin whales weren’t the only ones accumulating more crypto. Lookonchain used Arkham data to track a lone Ether whale who added 7,074 Ether to its stash on March 21, worth $13.8 million.

Source: Lookonchain

Ether has been moving between $1,876 and $2,097 in the last seven days, CoinGecko data shows. It’s still down over 57% from its all-time high of $4,878, which it hit in November 2021.

However, its open interest surged to a new all-time high on March 21, and the number of addresses with at least $100,000 worth of Ether started rising at the beginning of March, from just over 70,000 addresses on March 10 to over 75,000 on March 22.