 
 
A dormant Bitcoin whale woke up and chose violence by spooking skittish BTC traders with a $2 billion transfer.
Bitcoin plunged from above $122,000 to under $117,000 on Tuesday after the wallet tied to a Satoshi-era whale moved roughly 20,000 BTC worth over $2 billion to Galaxy Digital on Monday night, signaling plans to liquidate a significant chunk of their stash.
Whale Sends Over $2 Billion in BTC to Galaxy Digital
One of the largest Bitcoin holders in history has suddenly transferred 20,000 BTC, valued at approximately $2.34 billion, to Galaxy Digital in a possible over-the-counter (OTC) transaction.
Data from Nansen shows that the wallet made the transfer across seven separate transactions in batches varying from 500 BTC to 4,500 BTC. The last transfer of 3,160 Bitcoins made earlier today emptied the wallet. Blockchain sleuth Onchain Lens highlighted that the sender address was linked to the Bitcoin whale that recently moved over 80,000 BTC after 14 years of inactivity.
“This marks the first cash-out in his BTC history,” Onchain Lens postulated.
 
As reported by ZyCrypto, Coinbase’s head of product, Conor Grogan, previously speculated that there was a slim chance that the recently reactivated $8 billion in BTC may be tied to hacked or compromised private keys. This OG holder had received their coins in April and May 2011, when Bitcoin was worth between $0.78 and $3.4 per coin.
Galaxy Digital is already depositing these coins to leading digital asset exchanges, with Binance and Bybit receiving around $236 million worth of the benchmark crypto.
The decision by the long-dormant whale to cash out now through Galaxy Digital could be a strategic move to capitalize on Bitcoin’s recent explosive rally to new historic highs.
According to CoinMarketCap data sourced by ZyCrypto, BTC reached a new peak of $122,838 on Monday, fueled primarily by massive institutional demand and positive legislative efforts in the United States.
The king crypto has since given up some of its gains to change hands at $116,515 as of publication time, reflecting a 4.7% drop over the last 24 hours as the crypto community was shaken today by news of the OG whale’s multibillion-dollar moves.
Source: https://zycrypto.com/bitcoin-nosedives-under-117000-as-enormous-og-whale-cashes-out-2-billion-btc-after-14-year-hodl/