Whale Starts Selling Ethereum (ETH), What's Up?

JAKARTA – Owners of crypto assets in large quantities or commonly called whales are reported to have started to increase their ownership of the second largest cryptocurrency, namely Ethereum (ETH). The information was conveyed by crypto analytics firm Santiment recently.

Santiment detected the whales' activity on September 11, 2022. According to the firm, the Ethereum whales' crypto wallet addresses have added 3.5 million coins to their ETH coffers. Santiment looks at the activity of whales holding 1 million ETH or more.

“Since September 11, billionaire whale addresses #Ethereum holding 1 million or more $ETH have collectively added 3.5 million more coins. This has increased their cumulative pocket by +14%. There are currently 132 such addresses", reads the announcement from the official Santiment Twitter account (@santimentfeed), October 19, 2022.

This addition marks a 14 percent increase in the billionaire whale's ETH holdings over the period since The Merge. It also pushed the cumulative holdings of the 132 or so wallets included in this group to an all-time high balance of 28.55 million ETH which is worth approximately 36 billion US dollars, according to a UToday report.

Then, owners of ETH less than whales or sharks i.e. holders of crypto assets between 100 to 1 million ETH, have sold their Ethereum crypto assets. Notably, the redistribution trend started shortly after the migration of the Ethereum blockchain to use a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, according to Santiment data.

Despite the whales' activity, coupled with the hectic news regarding The Merge last September, ETH prices continue to trade mostly in the red. As of writing, Ethereum is trading at IDR 20,110,336 per coin. Data from Coingecko shows that the price of ETH fell by 0.6 percent in the last 24 hours.