An Ethereum whale is making a bold bet on Bitcoin. The peculiarity of this switch lies in the fact that the whale, an Ethereum OG, referring to an early investor or ETH adopter, held significant amounts of ETH before this time.
According to Lookonchain, an Ethereum OG, which it calls “0x4553,” is converting his ETH holdings into Bitcoin.
This Ethereum OG bought 21,000 ETH for $61.4 million at an average price of $2,922 between 2019 and 2023.
An #Ethereum OG (0x4553) is converting his $ETH holdings into $BTC.
Between 2019 and 2023, he bought 21,000 $ETH($61.4M) at an average price of $2,922.
Over the past 7 hours, he swapped 14,146 $ETH($44.3M) for 492 $WBTC, at a ratio of 0.03479.https://t.co/gKMsjNzX6Y pic.twitter.com/TC6TPJmb11
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) January 3, 2026
In a shift at 2026’s start, the Ethereum whale swapped a substantial part of his Ethereum holdings for wrapped Bitcoin. Lookonchain reported that in recent hours, the ETH whale swapped 14,146 ETH worth $44.3 million for 492 WBTC at a ratio of 0.03479.
The exact reason for the shift remains unknown, but it seems to be due to personal reasons, rather than ETH performance, as the switch coincided with a period of ETH price rally. At the time of writing, ETH was up 1.84% in the last 24 hours to $3,104 and up 5.94% weekly, outpacing Bitcoin in percentage gains.
The whale rotation from ETH to BTC marks the second of such instances in the last 24 hours; on Jan. 2, Lookonchain reported that an unknown whale, who lost $18.8 million on ETH in just two weeks, abandoned ETH and rotated into gold. The whale spent $14.58 million to buy 3,299 XAUT at a unit price of $4,421.
Ethereum sees inflows
The whale’s rotation from ETH to Bitcoin remains one of a few instances of such, with the broader scenario remaining one of ETH accumulation.
According to Lookonchain, a whale or institution recently bought 12,166 ETH worth $38.09 million from Coinbase, FalconX and Cumberland.
Another whale bought 5,104 ETH worth $16.09 million. Since Dec. 3, the whale has bought 51,374 ETH worth $159.76 million at an average price of $3,110.
Tom Lee’s Bitmine staked another 82,560 ETH worth $259 million, with the total staked by the Ethereum treasury firm at 544,064 ETH worth $1.62 billion.
On Jan. 2, spot Ethereum ETFs saw total net inflows of $174 million, with Grayscale’s ETHE posting the largest inflow at $53.69 million.
