A Satoshi-era whale with 80K BTC started dumping its holdings to crypto exchanges on Tuesday. This triggered a selling pressure on BTC and the broader crypto market, prompting Bitcoin price to fall below $117K.
The OG whale-linked wallet ‘bc1qq8’ initially transferred 4.5K BTC worth $536 million to Galaxy Digital, as per Arkham data. This was the first cash-out by the whale in 14.3 years after it moved 80K BTC to eight different wallets on July 4.
An hour later, the whale moved 4,000 BTC and 500 BTC to Galaxy Digital in an OTC deal worth nearly $600 million. Onchain Lens reported that the Satoshi-era whale deposited 9,000 BTC valued at $1.06 billion.
On-chain platform Lookonchain warned on X that the Bitcoin OG whale seems to have started selling its holdings on Tuesday. The whale used Galaxy Digital services to sell 9,000 BTC in total.
After 15 minutes, the whale again transferred BTC to Galaxy Digital. This time, the whale made three transfers of 2,043 BTC, 3,000 BTC, and 2,800 BTC. Notably, this wallet still holds 3,157 BTC worth $371.15 million.
Lookonchain said the whale sold 16,843 BTC worth more than $2 billion. Also, Galaxy Digital is depositing these BTC to crypto exchanges Bybit and Binance.
Hours later, the wallet was completely liquidated as the whale sent the remaining 3,157 BTC worth $371.15 million to Galaxy Digital.
Other whales have started selling their BTC after observing the original whale liquidating its holdings. Whale ‘0x960B’ closed a long position and flipped short on BTC, sitting at an unrealized profit of $228K.
The selloff by the Satoshi-era whale resulted in Bitcoin price slipping further by 2%, extending the fall to 5.60% from the recent ATH above $123K. The price currently trades at $116,718, with a 24-hour low and high of $116,953 and $123,091, respectively.
CoinGlass data also showed selling in the derivatives market. At the time of writing, the total BTC futures open interest dropped 2% to $86.04 billion in the last 4 hours. BTC futures OI on CME and Binance slipped more than 2.27% and 2.68%, respectively. This signals bearish sentiment among derivatives traders.
Also Read: OG Bitcoin Wallet Moves $2.42B in BTC After A Long Silence
