Ether whale dumps $41M days before the market crashed

A crypto whale holding massive amounts of Ether (ETH) sold $41 million worth of the asset a few days before the market crashed, avoiding a potential $5-million loss.

The trade was flagged by the blockchain analysis platform Lookonchain, which follows and shares what it considers to be smart trades. On Aug. 18, the crypto whale deposited 22,341 ETH on the Binance exchange and withdrew around $41 million in Tether (USDT).

*List of transactions that the crypto whale made before the crash. Source: Etherscan*

While the crypto whale lost around $1.7 million in value, the trader managed to avoid further potential losses that could have gone up to more than $5 million when the market prices dropped. On Aug. 18, crypto’s market capitalization dropped by 6% to $1.1 trillion, which is the lowest level seen in at least two months.

Ether, the second-largest crypto by market capitalization, dropped from around $1,820 per token on Aug. 17 to about $1,597 the next day. Meanwhile, Bitcoin (BTC), which composes about 50% of the entire crypto market, dropped from about $28,400 to $25,649 in the same time frame before making a recovery to above $26,000 in a few hours.

The price drop followed a report by mainstream media outlet The Wall Street Journal highlighting that Elon Musk’s aerospace technology firm, SpaceX, wrote down $373 million worth of BTC from 2021 to 2022. It still remains unclear whether the entire holdings were sold or not.

Meanwhile, the company’s Bitcoin write-down sparked confusion among crypto community members. Some media outlets reported that the firm sold the entire stash, while others expressed that they were unable to confirm the amount sold based on the report’s wordings. Some users on X (formerly Twitter) called out Musk on the platform, saying that he had “paper hands,” which is a term used to describe those who are unable to hold onto their crypto long term.

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