A Bitcoin whale just moved nearly 19,631 BTC worth about $184 million to an unknown wallet.
The fee for the transaction? About 0.00421580 BTC, worth about $40 at time of writing. Whale Alert was the first to spot the movement.
🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 19,631 #BTC (184,419,465 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) July 8, 2020
The whale initially moved the massive Bitcoin trove to a single wallet with no previous transaction history. About 37 minutes later, that wallet sent off the entire BTC haul to a long list of separate wallets, initially in chunks of about 195.045 BTC (approximately $1.83 million).
Of those recipients, all but one appears to have shifted the entirety of their Bitcoin into a flurry of smaller transactions with other wallets, resulting in hundreds of transactions across the board.
The initial sending address, which no longer holds any Bitcoin, has transactions dating back to November of 2018, according to blockchain.com. Had the wallet not moved the Bitcoin, it would currently rank as the 38th largest address, with more than 0.1% of the total coins in circulation, according to BitInfoCharts.
It is not clear if the BTC was sent to any known crypto exchange, where it could be sold on the open market.
The unknown Bitcoin whale who fired off the initial transaction could be trading BTC over-the-counter or moving their trove across multiple wallets for security and management purposes.
A cryptocurrency exchange, custody provider or institutional digital asset manager could also be responsible for the transfer.
