Crypto Whales Revealed: What They’re Snapping Up and Dumping as Market Hits $4 Trillion

Crypto's big players are making moves—and the rest of the market scrambles to keep up. Here's where the smart (or lucky) money's flowing as digital assets notch another historic milestone.

Whale Watching 2025: The $4T Feeding Frenzy

Forget retail traders—when crypto whales shift positions, markets tremble. These opaque transactions often signal coming volatility, whether through accumulation or sudden sell-offs. Today's action? A cocktail of strategic bets and profit-taking.

Blue Chips or Altcoin Roulette?

Bitcoin and Ethereum still dominate whale wallets, but sleeper alts are getting surprise injections. Some moves look calculated—others reek of FOMO as liquidity floods smaller caps. Meanwhile, exchanges report unusual stablecoin conversions suggesting... interesting timing.

The Cynic's Corner

Of course, tracking whale wallets assumes they're not just moving funds between their own accounts to manufacture 'signals.' But hey—in crypto, perception creates reality until the music stops.

Crypto Whales Capitalize on Bull Market with Multi-Million Dollar Trades

On-chain data showed that whales are actively trading Ethereum (ETH). This interest in the second-largest cryptocurrency comes as it continues to rise and remains just 11.8% shy of its all-time high (ATH).

According to data from Onchain Lens, the largest transaction involved a whale or institutional entity purchasing 49,533 ETH valued at $210.68 million. The purchase was made through Galaxy Digital, FalconX, and BitGo exchanges.

The ethereum whale now has 221,166 ETH, valued at $940.73 million, spread across six different wallets. Furthermore, Maelstrom’s CIO, Arthur Hayes, took a more diversified approach. He acquired a total of $6.85 million in assets. This included:

• 1,250 ETH, valued at $5.29 million.
• 424,000 Lido DAO (LDO), worth $550,000.
• 420,000 Ether.fi (ETHFI), valued at $510,000.
• 92,000 Pendle (PENDLE) tokens, worth $500,000.

These purchases reflect a significant addition to his crypto portfolio, focusing primarily on Ethereum-based assets.

“On 8/2, he believed BTC WOULD drop to $100,000 and ETH to $3,000, so he sold the ETH and ETH ecosystem tokens he bought in July, including ENA, AAVE, LDO, ETHFI, and PEPE,” analyst EmberCN wrote.

Besides buying, some whales are staking their assets for additional returns. A whale, identified by the address 0xA5e…eda0, which had remained dormant for three years, staked 4,736 ETH, valued at $19.84 million. 

This whale had accumulated the ETH for $9.12 million approximately 4-5 years ago. The investor has made a profit of around $10.7 million. Similarly, another whale, 0x1fc…aed5, withdrew 2,009 ETH, worth $8.53 million, from Binance to stake.

“Over the past 2 months, a total of 10,999 ETH, ($46.69 million) has been withdrawn from Binance for staking on EigenLayer and ETH2.0. Currently making a profit of $13.53 million,” OnChain Lens added.

Separately, some whales executed sell-offs. The 1INCH team investment fund offloaded 5,000 ETH at an average price of $4,215. This was then converted into 21.07 million USDC. 

Additionally, they sold 6.45 million 1INCH tokens at an average price of $0.28, resulting in 1.8 million USDC. These sales have yielded a profit of $8.36 million.

This indicated that the team is capitalizing on the current bullish market with a profit-taking strategy. Stablecoin bank Infini’s hackers also sold substantial ETH.

“The Infini Exploiter sold another 1,771 ETH($7.44 million) at $4,202 today. On February 24, they exploited @0xinfini, stealing $49.5M to buy 17,696 $ETH at $2,798. As ETH increased, they sold 1,770 ETH($5.88 million) at $3,321 and sent 4,501 ETH($15.03 million) to TornadoCash on July 17. They still hold 9,154 ETH(38.85 million),” Lookonchain revealed.

In addition to Ethereum, large investors are also engaging with other cryptocurrencies. Whale 0xc9d…642 borrowed 20 million USDC from Aave, transferred the funds to Kraken, and acquired 109.6 WBTC, worth $12.91 million. 

“This whale is leveraging WBTC purchases through AAVE in a looping loan strategy. They have currently accumulated a total of 603.5 WBTC ($71.62 million), with an average cost of approximately $90,382,” EmberCN posted.

After a month of inactivity, another crypto whale withdrew 274.22 Bitcoin (BTC), valued at approximately $32 million, from Binance. Moreover, Galaxy Digital transferred 224,000 Solana (SOL), worth around $41.12 million, to two centralized exchanges, Binance and Coinbase, sparking sell-off concerns.

Additionally, a smart money address pulled out 210,000 LINK from Binance. The address holds a total of 335,000 LINK. Lastly, Nansen CEO Alex Svanevik sent 1 million LDO tokens to Coinbase.

These transactions reflect a mix of profit-taking, long-term staking, and speculative trading among whales and institutions.