Whale Transfers $25 Million in Ethereum Off Exchanges
An anonymous investor has moved US$25m worth of ETH from their Coinbase account to an unknown wallet.
The move comes as fortunes may be changing for the potential approval of a spot Ether ETF.
Most pundits believed an Ether ETF was set to be rejected later this month.
However, a shift in sentiment means that some analysts believe there’s a 75% chance for the Ether ETF to be approved in the coming weeks.
Last night, for whatever reason, I felt the urge to trawl through YouTube to listen to several minutes of the haunting Humpback Whale song. (If you’ve never heard them, I highly recommend it). It turns out this desire was something of a premonition – forecasting whale activity of a different kind.
That’s right, the seas have calmed and we’re back with more whale watching.
Related: ETH Prices Rally as ETF Rumours Swirl; Analysts Boost Approval Odds from 25% to 75%
ETH ETF May Spur More Whale Activity
Last night, as I fell asleep to the sounds of our cetacean friends, another whale was singing their song – to the tune of US$25m (AU$37.5m). An unknown investor moved an impressive 6,649 ETH from their Coinbase account to an anonymous wallet.
Of course, the simple story here could be the trader wanted to move a significant portion of their portfolio into self-custody. As we saw with the collapse of FTX in 2022, keeping large amounts of crypto on a centralised exchange can be a little risky.
It’s possible that a high-net-worth individual wanted to make a splash in the crypto scene and picked up a lump sum of ETH on the back of some positive ETF news. The past few months has seen the industry pretty downtrodden, with most expecting the SEC to reject spot Ether funds sometime this week, following several delays and ambiguous statements.
SEC decision deadline this week on spot eth ETFs…
SEC must approve both the 19b-4s (exchange rule changes) & S-1s (registration statements) for ETFs to launch.
Technically possible for SEC to approve 19b-4s & then slow play S-1s (esp given reported lack of engagement here).
— Nate Geraci (@NateGeraci) May 19, 2024
However, according to Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas, the United State’s financial regulatory power may have backflipped. Nobody can know for sure why, however, it appears the SEC wants to avoid becoming the bad guys throttling crypto innovation as regulation of digital assets becomes a huge talking point for the 2024 US election.
Update: @JSeyff and I are increasing our odds of spot Ether ETF approval to 75% (up from 25%), hearing chatter this afternoon that SEC could be doing a 180 on this (increasingly political issue), so now everyone scrambling (like us everyone else assumed they’d be denied). See… https://t.co/gcxgYHz3om
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) May 20, 2024
The change in sentiment has seen the price of Ether run the past week, up 30% to US $3,790 (AU$5,683).
Ethereum (ETH), 7-day graph, source: CoinMarketCap
We all saw what happened when BTC spot ETFs were approved. So could this whale simply be anticipating a new ATH for Ethereum in the coming months?
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The post Whale Transfers $25 Million in Ethereum Off Exchanges appeared first on Crypto News Australia.
Filed under: Bitcoin - @ May 22, 2024 2:58 am