Bitcoin Whale Dumps Billions For ETH, But $5B Selloff Still Looms

A long-dormant Bitcoin “OG” has been rotating billions of dollars’ worth of BTC into ETH over the past two weeks, executing the bulk of the trades on Hyperliquid and withdrawing large tranches of ETH to self-custody—before staking a significant portion on the Beacon Chain.

Bitcoin OG Whale Still Rotates Into ETH

On-chain sleuth “MLM” has chronicled the flows in real time. In the most recent 46-hour window, the address cluster associated with the trader sold 7,000 BTC (≈$759 million at reference prices used by MLM) and bought 171,791.84 ETH (≈$773 million).

MLM added that 3,000 BTC remained in the actively used source address—likely earmarked for further rotation—while two older wallets still held a combined 46,816 BTC (≈$5.07 billion). Cumulatively across the past 11 days, MLM tallied 34,110 BTC sold (≈$3.7 billion) and 813,298.84 ETH purchased (≈$3.66 billion), using $108,400 per BTC and $4,500 per ETH as baseline pricing for comparability.

The execution venue has become part of the story. Hyperliquid’s public explorer (HypurrScan) shows heavy activity at the Hyperliquid account cited by MLM, corresponding with phased BTC deposits and batched ETH withdrawals. “MoonOverlord”—a trader—downplayed the mystery around the venue choice: “idk why it’s bizarre? it’s a trade, he picked the best venue.” MLM replied that the oddity is not the platform but that “the identity of this person is unknown, and he decided to swap such a large amount of BTC to ETH, which is unusual for a ‘og’ bitcoin whale.”

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Arkham Intelligence independently flagged the same entity, writing: “THIS WHALE JUST BOUGHT $430M OF ETH – AND STILL HAS $650M LEFT TO BUY,” and identifying specific addresses on both chains. According to Arkham, the whale “has purchased over $3 BILLION of ETH in total and staked the majority of it,” with flows linking a BTC source wallet beginning “169q…” and an ETH receiver “0x6167…”.

Those staking claims are now visible on-chain. On September 1, funding flows from 0x6167… led to a “Beacon Depositor” account that submitted a series of deposit transactions totaling 165,010 ETH to Ethereum’s staking contract, with dozens of 30,000 ETH-sized and 15,010 ETH-sized deposit calls posted within the same hour. The deposit contract view and the funding trail from 0x6167… corroborate that a substantial slice of the newly acquired ETH has moved directly into staking.

On the Bitcoin side, the active source wallet “169q…” and two long-idle companion wallets “17MWd…” and “12Xqe…” anchor the cluster that MLM has been tracking since last week. Mempool records show recent inter-wallet activity and outputs from 169q… consistent with the staged deposits to Hyperliquid described in the thread.

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The trader’s provenance is still speculative. MLM argues the entity is “presumably Asian,” noting that the original BTC was accumulated seven to eight years ago via Asia-linked platforms and miners—“HTX, OKX, ViaBTC (a mining pool), Bixin (a miner), and Binance.” But MLM cautioned readers not to over-interpret intent: “Of course, don’t take this prediction as financial advice, since it’s all speculation for now and we don’t know the intentions of this whale.”

$5 Billion Selloff Still Looms

While commentators are debating motives, the mechanics are clear: staged BTC funding to a single trading venue, piecemeal ETH fills to minimize slippage, rapid withdrawals to self-custody, and swift conversion of a large portion to staked ETH. The cadence of deposits and withdrawals—some clustered over weekends—also lines up with timing observations in MLM’s logs and Arkham’s updates.

What remains uncertain is how much further the rotation will go. MLM’s running ledger suggested that at least several thousand BTC were still poised to move: “Additionally, there’s another combined 46.816 BTC ($5.07B) across these wallets: 17MWd [and] 12Xqeq. Of this, another 14.495 BTC ($1.57B) might get rotated based on previous activity, though it’s unclear what will happen with the remaining 32.321 BTC ($3.5B). At this point, it looks like he is rotating everything lol.”

At press time, BTC traded at $109,621.

Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com