Over the past few weeks, prominent cryptocurrency investors, also referred to as "whales," have been adding over $500 million worth of Ethereum ($ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, to their holdings.
Large cryptocurrency whales have been amassing the second-largest cryptocurrency over the last several weeks through a series of withdrawals from top cryptocurrency exchange Binance, according to data published by well-known on-chain analysis service Lookonchain.
According to the data, a whale wallet that might be owned by Justin Sun, the founder of TRON, removed 4,666 ETH from Binance, which is estimated to be worth $14.9 million. Since April 8, the wallet has taken out 132,054 ETH, amassing a value of almost $430 million.
In order to long the cryptocurrency by depositing it on the decentralized lending protocol Compound to borrow USDT, another whale, identified by its wallet's initials "0x9EB0," withdrew 7,182 ETH from the exchange, and another whale, identified by its wallet's initials "0x4446," withdrew 11,892 ETH from Binance, worth approximately $37.7 million.
Lookonchain identified another whale, "0x1958," who took out $5,1818, or $16.28 million, from the top cryptocurrency exchange and staked the money using Bedrock, a non-custodial liquid restaking technology, and Pendle, a DeFi protocol.
Notably, as previously mentioned, a sizable cryptocurrency whale lost more than $4.5 million after they attempted to leverage their long Ethereum position twice and were forced to pay back their debt on a decentralized protocol when the market fell.
The whale suffered a loss earlier in the month after initially taking out a USDT loan on the decentralized lending platform Compound and having to pay back the money it later used to buy more ETH.
The trader then tried again, taking money off of the top cryptocurrency exchange Binance and depositing it onto the protocol. They then borrowed USDT and used that money to buy more ETH, so increasing the leverage of their cryptocurrency holdings.
The whale's objective was to sell all 10,701 ETH, which was worth about $33 million at the time, on the Binance exchange in order to pay off the debt from their losing long position. An extra loss of more than $4 million came from this last decision.
April 2024, Cryptoniteuae