By George Ward
An alleged BTC whale address has moved about 15K BTC, worth over $252.5 million, from a crypto wallet address beginning with 1KUr81 to another address with 1LGAVQ. The address has been inactive for the past four years.
Other crypto whales have been busy in the past month as the crypto community awaits the BTC halving.
Who Owns The Wallet Address?
LookOnChain, a blockchain explorer, announced the news of the transfer. The blockchain explorer noted that the owner sent the assets about four years ago.
Before the transaction took place, the wallet had about 11,056 BTC. Following the transfer, 1LGAVQ has over 26,056 BTC worth over $439.2 million.
The wallet is worth around $1 billion using BTC’s all-time high price. Unfortunately, the value of BTC has fallen during the bearish market, which began in the early months of last year.
According to on-chain data, the wallet owner bought 15K BTC in 2019 before moving it to another wallet on January 6th. Sadly, no platform has linked the address to an OTC trading desk or crypto exchange.
Although it is uncertain if the wallet belongs to a whale, there is a high chance a retail investor is the owner of the wallet address. This is due to the nature of the recent transaction. Retail investors might try accumulating their holdings from different wallets into one wallet.
The Wallet Belongs To An Exchange – JieData
There is also the possibility that the account owner is a blockchain-focused company needing quick money. However, this is unlikely, given that no one has connected the address to any entity.
This could also mean that another FTX saga is on the horizon. On the other hand, JieData, an on-chain analytics firm, argued that the wallet address belongs to a crypto exchange.
The firm’s tweet added that this occurs when exchanges are about to liquidate funds. According to the tweet, an exchange usually moves funds to a top-up wallet address before sending them to various platforms.
JieData noted that the alleged whale moved about 11,056 BTC to top the BTC in the literature address and then moved everything to an exchange. Moreover, there has been no activity on the wallet address ever since.