Bullish markets have turned crypto whale watching into a spectator sport.
Today, a Bitcoin user sent 9,156 BTC ($291 million) between addresses. Four hours later, the price of BTC had dropped up to 13%.
While there’s little to suggest the two are related (neither address is flagged as an exchange), the now-steady stream of high value transfers has the imaginations of crypto fans running wild.
[Read more: Bitcoin’s 12th birthday marked by all-time high]
Other transfers more obviously relate to exchanges. Whale Alert just detected 1,000 BTC sent to Coinbase — a stash worth $31.4 million.
Sending that amount of cryptocurrency to an exchange means the holder wants to either:
- Dump it.
- Store it.
- Trade it.
- Sell it.
- Watch Twitter freak out.
Still, these moves pale in comparison to a transfer from three weeks ago that shuffled 32,353 BTC ($620 million then, $1 billion now) between nondescript wallets — for a $12 fee.