After 5 years of hibernation, the fifth largest Bitcoin wallet, dubbed 37X, has moved, to 3 new addresses, something like $6 billion in BTC. We are talking about almost the entire balance placed on the e-wallet, which now possesses only 1.4 BTC.
According to what revealed by Arkham Intelligence on X, the former Twitter, the transfers took place last 23 March. The whale owned as many as 94,500 coins, thus just over $6 billion in BTC, before moving the sums.
What do whales have to do with it?
The term whale, which literally translates into Italian as whale, is proper to the cryptocurrency lexicon. This curious expression is used to indicate an investor who holds a huge number of credits and has a very inflated electronic wallet, so to speak.
In the history of Bitcoin, queen of cryptocurrencies as we have rightly called it on SpazioCrypto, 37X has been among the richest wallets thanks to its capital of 6 billion dollars in BTC. Following this credit split, of course, it no longer boasts such a high position.
The division of the $6 billion in BTC
The division of the substantial capital took place according to these proportions:
- $5.03 billion in BTC was sent to the address bc1q8yj, which received the largest portion of the initial credit;
- the account named bc1q6m5 received a credit in coins amounting to $561.46 million;
- The bc1q592 profile, the one most involved in the movement and the author of the main transfers, on the other hand, had to make do, to put it mildly, with $488.40 million in the form of BTC.
In short, it was a good payday for all the addresses involved. But why did the whale that held $6 billion in BTC as far back as 2019 decide to make transfers such as these, which of course can only make headlines given their magnitude, only at the end of March 2024?
In all likelihood, the decision is due to the fact that we are approaching a period of very high interest, even institutional, for Bitcoin. As of 20 April, in fact, block rewards will be halved.
What is a block reward?
The expression block reward refers to those incentives, dedicated to the miner, that are granted to those who take the trouble toverify blockchain transactions and ensure the system's underlying security.
These rewards are awarded in amounts calculated by rather complex mathematical formulas, which take into account mining difficulty, network activity and a variety of other factors. Currencies that make use of block rewards are Bitcoin, Litecoin, Monero, Dogecoin and Zcash.
The strategy behind the operation
In jargon, when a currency halves its rewards it is called halving. Bitcoin is currently enjoying very good health, so much so that it has once again reached - and then surpassed, just in the last few days - the psychological threshold of 70 thousand dollars in value.
The current rally is driven precisely by the approaching halving. In recent weeks, we are witnessing the rise of BTC inflows into the top 10 US exchange-traded funds (ETFs). This is due to the fact that miners are particularly active.
It should therefore come as no surprise that even well-established players are taking an interest in cryptocurrencies at this particular stage. The choices of funds such as Fidelity and BlackRock, which entered the field by investing through the actions of some of their subsidiaries, have legitimised the crypto asset class even more. In light of this, the whale's strategy to make their portfolios more nimble may be due to the turmoil of the moment.
The month of April promises to be a infuenced month for Bitcoin. Numerous investors may try to get hold of other currency. Given the good time to sell, it is possible that a high percentage of the BTC traded in the coming weeks will pass through channels outside the official exchanges, and perhaps 37X plans to divest part of its gigantic $6 billion BTC capital at this particularly favourable juncture.
