The Rotation That Hasn’t Stopped
Over the past five days, a whale sold 1,107 $BTC worth $86.76 million on Hyperliquid, bought 34,422 $ETH worth $86.5 million, and staked the lot, onchain analytics account Lookonchain reported earlier today.
That is a sharp step up from Sept. 18, when trackers first flagged 11 newly created wallets, likely controlled by the same entity, that had sold 602 $BTC for 18,780 $ETH over three days. In the 72 hours since, the whale has added roughly 505 $BTC of selling and 15,642 $ETH of buying.
Staking is key here, as the coins sent to validators did not sit on an exchange ready to be dumped, suggestive of a medium-term bet. It also isn’t the only rotation this month, given Bitcoin.com News reported on a separate wallet that sold 866 $BTC for 26,924 $ETH hours before the CLARITY Act vote on Sept. 15.
The second buyer has made smaller, but stranger moves, with the wallet (0x4cee) having transferred three clusters around the 21st.
- July 21: The wallet sent 20 million $USDC to Binance and came back with 10,501 $ETH at about $1,904.
- Aug. 21: It sold 10,500 $ETH at an average of $2,252, booking a $3.66 million profit.
- Sept. 21: It returned to buy at a higher price, sending 7,567 $ETH worth $19.93 million back to its wallet.
Blockscout shows the wallet sent three genuine $USDC transfers to its usual Binance deposit address that night: a 2 million test, then 18 million, then 12.17 million, for a total of $32.17 million. That is below the $40 million figure circulating on social media, and it still leaves roughly $12 million of the deposit unaccounted for onchain, possibly still sitting on Binance for more buying. The wallet’s $ETH balance currently shows about 7,568 $ETH.
The Scammers Showed Up Within Minutes
Within minutes of the real deposits, the wallet’s history was filled with fake transfers. More than two dozen lookalike token contracts spoofed “$USDC” and “$ETH” with look-alike characters in their tickers. They were routed to addresses that copied the first and last characters of the real Binance deposit address, and some even mimicked the exact 18 million and 12.17 million amounts.
This is address poisoning, a bet that the owner copies the wrong address on the next deposit. The tactic drained tens of millions of dollars in January alone, including one $12.2 million loss. This time, every real transfer went to the right address.
Is the Rally Running on Whales Alone?
$ETH is trading near $2,738 at press time, up about 6% in 24 hours and 11% over 30 days. It cleared Jan. 31’s intraday high today, having first broken above $2,600 during the Sept. 11 CPI squeeze. Bitcoin’s price, for its part, has moved upward in parallel, surging close to $85,000 over the past hour and lifting the whole market along with it.
