Whales are diving into an altcoin project that was originally designed to help to scale Ethereum but has since emerged as a direct competitor to the leading smart contract platform.
The on-chain data aggregator WhaleStats was the first to track two huge whale transactions of the Ethereum-based altcoin Polygon (MATIC).
One whale accumulated 900,000 MATIC worth $2.1 million in a single transaction on Wednesday. The crypto was sent from an unidentified wallet to the whale.
About a half-hour later, a second whale accumulated 999,990 MATIC worth $2.32 million in a single transaction. The crypto in question was sent to the second whale from the leading exchange Binance.
Although Polygon was originally designed solely to support Ethereum and offer an inexpensive way to transact Ethereum-based tokens, it has since emerged as a rival in its own right. A recent report from the blockchain development platform Alchemy found most new projects on Polygon are exclusively using the network instead of utilizing both Polygon and Ethereum.
In the last seven days, MATIC is at number six on the list of most purchased altcoins by the top 1,000 Ethereum whale wallets.
Ethereum (ETH) itself is the number one most-purchased altcoin, followed by the stablecoin Tether (USDT).
Next up is FTX Token (FTT), which is the native asset of the crypto exchange FTX.
The stablecoin Tether (USDT) is the fourth-most accumulated altcoin in the last week, followed by the stablecoin Binance USD (BUSD).
After MATIC, the Bitcoin-pegged token Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) is in the seventh slot, followed by the data oracle Chainlink (LINK) and the decentralized exchange token WOO.
The metaverse gaming altcoin Decentraland (MANA) is in the tenth slot and is the only gaming altcoin on the list in the last seven days.
Don't Miss a Beat – Subscribe to get email alerts delivered directly to your inboxFeatured Image: Shutterstock/Apex Infinity Games/Andy Chipus/Vladimir Sazonov