A mysterious “Asian whale” amassed more than 94,000 bitcoins during the first half of the year, and now it has begun to move them back to the Huobi cryptocurrency exchange, sparking fears of a new wave of sales.
The Blockchain data shows that the address of bitcoin 1KAt6STtisWMMVo5XGdos9P7DBNNsFfjx7 accumulated more than 93,947 BTC – at a point worth more than $ 700 million – during a period of two months between March 25 and May 27, 2017.
Since then, the owner of the wallet has reduced his balance by 8,000 BTC. he sent 4,000 BTC directly to Huobi in two transactions of equal size. They have sent another 4,000 BTC during that same period of time, and most of those funds also ended in Huobi after being channeled through other addresses.
Any Clue About the Whale?
Many of these addresses are P2SH addresses, which start with the initial symbol “3” and are usually addresses of multiple signatures, which require several keys to sign a payment before being able to send it.
The WalletExplorer data indicates that a significant portion of the funds originated from the Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange Huobi and the China-based wallet platform HaoBTC, suggesting that the owner of the wallet resides in Asia or at least employs the services of an intermediary based in Asia.
In any case, the fact that the wallet has started to transfer funds to the exchanges raises the question of whether the whale, whoever it is, is preparing for a mass sale, or maybe that has already started.