Bitcoin worth $4.5 billion transferred in historic event
2 min readTL; DR Breakdown
- A whale has moved $4.5 billion worth of Bitcoin
- It’s the largest transfer in history
- $4.3 billion worth of BTC still remains in the address
A Bitcoin whale is currently causing a stir in the crypto industry after what has largely been noted as an historic transfer of a significant amount of BTC. On Saturday, this particular whale initiated a crypto transfer amounting to 100,510 BTC valued at around $4.5 billion.
What’s even more significant amount this event is that it’s the largest BTC transfer in history. Interestingly, the transaction cost for the whole amount was just $21. The whale action was reported in a Twitter post by Bitcoin Block Bot.
Whale alert!
Someone moved 103,510 BTC ($4B) in block 672,436 https://t.co/IT4rl1hTPu
— Bitcoin Block Bot (@BtcBlockBot) February 27, 2021
Someone moved 103,510 BTC ($4B) in block 672,436 Historic Bitcoin transfers
Before this, the record for the largest Bitcoin transfer ever held by the transfer of 88,857 BTC worth $1.1 billion that happened back in October 2020. Now, in the light of things, this record has been broken by the current event.
It’s notable that crypto whales have been active of late, with many big transfers associated with investment funds and exchanges. It’s also a fact that whales, led by the same crypto investment funds, have been accumulating. Grayscale is one of the funds that has been particularly aggressive in its accumulation of an assortment of cryptos, with the most focus going towards Bitcoin and Ethereum. At some point last year, Grayscale was buying more BTC that was availed by miners in a week.
The address
A closer look at the address involved in the mega transaction reveals that the transfer was facilitated by Bitfinex, a crypto exchange. Apparently, the said address points to a crypto cold storage operated by Bitfinex. Bitfinex hasn’t commented on this claim, but the entity is known to transfer large amounts of cryptos.
Also, it’s understandable that most crypto exchanges keep user funds in cold wallets for security purposes. This makes the recent large transfer not much of a worry for the Bitcoin community, especially considering that such large whale activity has impacted the market in the past because most people took it as either bullish or bearish for the industry.
There’s still more
Even after transferring over 100,000 BTC, the said wallet still remains with around 98, 511 BTC. This makes it the third most valuable address. The Bitcoin remaining in the address is estimated to be worth around $4.3 billion. These figures are consistent with the time of the said transfer when BTC’s price was lower. As at now, the remaining BTC is worth over $4.7 billion at the current price of $48.5k per coin.
