The short version
- Bitcoin whales idle since 2023 sent 2,571 BTC, about $206 million, to one Coinbase Prime deposit address three minutes apart on Monday; the coins cost about $60 million.
- A third wallet idle since December 2022 sent 244 BTC to the same address minutes later, and the Coinbase premium has been negative for 53 days, so a sale is possible but a Prime deposit can also be custody or an OTC deal.
- The crew is watching whether Bitcoin holds $79,800 into Wednesday’s Fed decision and whether the coins leave Coinbase again.
Two Bitcoin whales that hadn’t touched their coins since 2023 woke up on Monday and sent 2,571 BTC, about $206 million, to Coinbase Prime. They did it three minutes apart, to the same deposit address, with Bitcoin sitting just above $80,000.
The coins cost about $60 million. That is a paper gain of roughly $146 million, and the kind of number that makes traders assume a sale. We followed the coins on the blockchain. There is a third wallet in the story, and the second “whale” that followed is probably not a whale at all.
Lookonchain spotted the two wallets on Tuesday:
Two whales deposited 2,571 $BTC ($206.52M) into #CoinbasePrime 10 hours ago after 3 years of inactivity.
arkm.com/explorer/addre…
arkm.com/explorer/addre…
Who Are the Bitcoin Whales Behind the $206M Transfer?
Nobody has put a name to them. The two addresses carry no public label, but their history is plain on the chain:
- The bigger wallet received 1,584.89 BTC on January 18, 2023, when Bitcoin closed at $20,677. Cost: about $32.8 million.
- The smaller one received 986.18 BTC on May 30, 2023, at $27,694. Cost: about $27.3 million.
Neither moved a coin for almost three years. At 14:39 UTC on Monday the bigger wallet sent a tiny test payment to a Coinbase Prime deposit address. About 80 minutes later the smaller wallet emptied into that address at 16:00 UTC, and the bigger one followed at 16:03 UTC.
Then came a third of the dormant Bitcoin wallets. At 16:19 UTC a wallet funded on December 21, 2022, and idle since then sent its 244.08 BTC to the same deposit address. Those coins cost about $4.1 million at the time and are worth about $19.6 million now. With it, the total reaches about 2,815 BTC, or $226 million.
A Coinbase deposit address is tied to one account, so three old wallets paying into one address within 20 minutes points to a single owner, or one fund working for several. Coinbase swept each deposit into its own wallets within minutes.
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Are the Bitcoin Whales Selling?
Not necessarily. Coinbase Prime is where funds keep coins in custody and trade large blocks over the counter, away from the order book. A deposit there can mean a sale, a move into a custody account or collateral for a loan. The chain can’t tell which.
Some context makes a sale more likely, though. The Coinbase premium, the gap between Coinbase’s US dollar price and Binance, has been negative for 53 days in a row, analyst Ted Pillows noted on Monday, and is at its lowest in almost two years. Our own check of hourly Coinbase and Binance prices shows the same picture: a discount every day since early September, widening to about 0.16% on Monday and 0.18% so far on Tuesday. When Coinbase trades below Binance, US buyers are lighter than sellers.
The second big transfer of the afternoon is less than it looked. At 18:19 UTC Whale Alert flagged 1,847 BTC, about $148 million, moving from an “unknown wallet” to Coinbase Institutional. That wallet had been filled from Coinbase’s own wallets in the two hours before, partly with the third whale’s 244 BTC. This reads as Coinbase moving coins between its own wallets, not more Bitcoin whale activity.
SIDE TRAIL: Bitcoin Below $80K: $402M in Longs Liquidated in 4 Hours
Bitcoin Price: Can $80,000 Hold?
So far, yes. Bitcoin trades at $80,400 at the time of writing, flat over 24 hours, after dipping to $79,506 on Tuesday. The 50-day moving average at $81,876 now caps it, with the $81,479 swing high just below.
Support sits at $79,800, then $76,264. A daily close under $79,800 would put the mid-$70,000s in play. The Fed decision on Wednesday at 18:00 UTC (2:00 p.m. in Washington) is the next big test. If the Bitcoin whales’ coins hit the market before then, it lands on a book that is already thin on the US side.
TRAIL MAP: Bitcoin Weekly Close at $80,154: Lowest Since September
In crypto since 2016. Trades the macro picture and reads the market on the high timeframes.
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