In the early hours of today, Bitcoin surged from $11,400 to around $11,800 which it is currently trading at. The level of activity in the crypto market has picked up thanks to this surge. Along with the high-level activity, is several whale movements where over half a billion dollars worth of BTC was sent from unknown wallets within three hours.
Whale Alert Notifies of Huge Bitcoin Movement from Unknown Wallets
On July 8, 2019, Whale Alert, a Twitter bot that monitors huge crypto transfers noted that some traders had made several Bitcoin transfers amounting to $532 million in just three hours.
The origin of most of these transfers are unknown and they were not made from exchanges (except one from Huobi). For this reason, it cannot be said that it is an exchange moving its funds to a cold store.
On the other hand, two of such transfers were made to cryptocurrency exchanges (Bitfinex & Huobi) which gives the impression that the individual(s) behind the transfers may possibly dump 9,792 BTC worth $116 million into the market.
Specifically, the transfers were 4,979 BTC, 4,983 BTC, 4,995 BTC, 5,000 BTC, 5,000 BTC, 5,000 BTC, 5,000 BTC, 4,500 BTC, and 4,792 BTC. Each of these is currently valued between $56 million and $59 million.
In the same vein, Whale Alert reported of the movement of part of the Bitcoin which was stolen from Binance, a Malta-based cryptocurrency exchange. In May, $40 million worth of Bitcoin was stolen from Binance. As of today, two movements of $8 million (706.1 BTC) and $11k (1 BTC) respectively were detected from the wallet which the stolen funds were hoarded.
Tether Supplies $100 Million USDT to the Market
One more remarkable movement that was noticed today, is Tether’s minting of $100 million worth of USDT tokens. The virtual asset is a stablecoin that is pegged to the dollar and as such, it is less volatile than other crypto assets. Like other stablecoins, traders use USDT to hold their profits in order to prevent a decline due to volatility.
While commenting on Tether’s minting of new tokens, Jesse Powell, Kraken’s CEO opined that it signifies that traders are pumping the US dollar into the crypto market. According to the CEO, he has no inside knowledge of what’s happening at Tether.
“So I think what you’re seeing in Tether is just a very transparent reflection of what is happening at the banking system level with all the exchanges. When new Tether is being printed, 99% of the time tons of US dollars are coming into the exchanges as well, and it’s not just being represented as Tether on the blockchain.”
However, from historical events, there is usually an increase in the supply of Tether alongside a growth in the supply of US dollars into Kraken as with other exchanges.
