For the past several days, Ethereum’s price has been hovering around the $2,500 mark, showing little signs of movement in either direction. Despite the inflows into Ethereum Spot ETFs last week, the cryptocurrency, which holds the second largest market cap, has found it hard to maintain a breakout above the $2,600 resistance area.
An event that has piqued the curiosity, and perhaps worry of Ethereum holders, is the re-emergence of a dormant whale wallet containing millions in ETH. The sudden reactivation of this long-sleeping address brings up questions about impending selling pressure and its potential impact on the market.
Whale Alerts, an on-chain tracker, was the first to report the revival of a pre-mined Ethereum address that had remained inactive for nearly a decade. The wallet, holding 2,000 ETH, had its last transaction 9.9 years ago. At that time, the entire cache was worth just $620. Now, that same amount is valued at over $5 million, marking the owner’s profit at approximately 820x based on current prices. At Ethereum’s highest ever price of $4,878 in 2021, the cryptocurrencies displayed an unrealized gain of 1573x.
Whale Alerts also reported the first transaction after 9.9 years, which involved the transfer of 0.0001 ETH from the whale address “0xcF26” to a newly created ETH address “0x2C12”. Etherscan’s on-chain transaction data further reveals that the whale address sent 500 ETH into the new address shortly after. Tracing the transaction data from Etherscan, it appears these 500 ETH eventually landed at address “0x28C6”, known to be owned by crypto exchange Binance. This suggests that the 500 ETH may have already been sold via the exchange, or are in preparation for liquidation.
At present, the original whale address still possesses approximately 1,500 ETH, currently valued at $3.796 million. This raises the question if the remaining funds will also be sold. While a full liquidation cannot be confirmed, the pattern of the 500 ETH transfer and the involvement of an exchange address suggests that the possibility should not be ruled out.
As it stands, Ethereum’s price action around the $2,500 mark is fragile. If the whale offloads more ETH, the increased selling pressure could make it more difficult for Ethereum to breakout from its current consolidation phase, especially if there isn’t sufficient buying pressure to counter the ETH being sold.
As of writing, Ethereum is trading at $2,525, with the past 24 hours seeing Ethereum trading between $2,549 and $2,495.
