On May 1st, a Bitcoin whale account moved 40,000 BTC (around $229 million) from a BTC address to another BTC address. The network fee that was paid was completely negligible, just 57 cents.
The account that initiated the transfer was bc1q9sh6544xls87x7skjzyfhkty4wq7z76vn7qzq9, moving the amount to address bc1q5shngj24323nsrmxv99st02na6srekfctt30ch. Numerous theories instantly appeared on the internet about the identity of the whale account. People on Twitter actually made speculations that Bitcointalk user Loaded, a very popular poster there, is the whale. He is actually renowned for his BTC stash. The user did not deny or confirm this speculation.
Those that know the technical part of the system know that the first 2 address characters, “bc1”, mean that the address uses SegWit, a protocol that appeared on Aug 23 with the purpose of making BTC transactions cheaper and faster.
According to specialists, the Bitcoin fees are mismatched, with the mistake appearing because consumer wallets do not correctly estimate the required fee.
A transaction of 40,000 BTC is definitely large, but larger ones were handled in the past. On January 10, 2019, we saw a transaction of 130,004 BTC to an address, being the second largest payment ever. The largest transaction happened in 2011, on November 16, and it was 500,000 BTC.
The Bitcoin Whales Are Accumulating BTC
Market whales now go through an obvious accumulation period. 100 of the largest wallet addresses recently accumulated more BTC, around 150,000 more. These came from accounts that held under 10,000 and 1,000 BTC. This practically shows us that those that have a lot of BTC want more. However, many of the BTC addresses that hold a lot of Bitcoin are actually crypto exchanges.
