Billions Flee Bitcoin: Ethereum Emerges as Institutional Darling in Historic Shift

Money talks—and right now it's screaming Ethereum's name as billions pivot from Bitcoin's stagnant throne.

The Great Rotation

Institutional whales aren't just dipping toes—they're plunging entire portfolios into Ethereum's smart contract ecosystem. Bitcoin's store-of-value narrative? Looking increasingly like digital gold—heavy, shiny, but not exactly productive.

Execution Over HODLing

While Bitcoin maximalists chant 'number go up,' Ethereum's network actually does things—decentralized finance, NFTs, tokenization—all humming while Bitcoin's blockchain mostly just stores value. (And let's be honest: watching transaction queues is about as exciting as traditional banking.)

The cynical take? Wall Street finally found a crypto it can understand—one that might actually generate yield rather than just sitting there looking expensive.

In brief

• A historic investor holding over 5 billion $ in Bitcoin is starting a strategic shift towards Ethereum.
• The identified wallet transferred 2,000 BTC, approximately 216 million $, to Hyperliquid to convert them into ETH.
• The transaction was executed in several stages, via small fractional sales, resulting in the purchase of more than 42,750 ETH.
• Arkham Intelligence reveals that this same actor has already accumulated 2.5 billion $ of ETH in recent days.

Massive BTC to ETH transfers detected on Hyperliquid

On August 29, 2025, unusual activity was detected on the Hyperliquid platform. An address identified by Arkham Intelligence as linked to a holder of more than 5 billion dollars in bitcoin carried out a series of transactions aimed at converting a significant portion of its BTC into Ethereum, in a context of massive capital flight towards the market’s second largest crypto.

BREAKING: $5 BILLION BTC WHALE BUYING UP TO $1 BILLION $ETH

A whale holding over $5B of BTC is currently buying $ETH. He just moved $1.1 BILLION of BTC to a new wallet and has started purchasing ETH through Hyperunit/HL.

This whale bought $2.5 BILLION of ETH last week, and… pic.twitter.com/cMQWrYBmZb

Indeed, this address, ending with eCb43, received 1,000 BTC in two separate transactions, approximately 108 million dollars at the current rate. This initial deposit was followed by multiple swaps on Hyperliquid, mostly in small volumes, between 1 and 1.5 BTC.

Here are the key facts about this operation :

• The first deposit : 1,000 BTC (≈ $108M) received by the wallet eCb43, divided into two transfers ;

• The selling method : transactions in small batches, with ETH conversions executed progressively ;

• The second deposit : another 1,000 BTC transferred shortly after, following exactly the same logic ;

• The platform used : Hyperliquid via its Hyperunit overlay, which allows native swapping between BTC and ETH ;

• The final result : over 42,750 ETH accumulated, fully transferred out of the wallet after conversion.

Although technical, this operation was conducted transparently on the blockchain, allowing complete traceability. The choice of Hyperliquid/Hyperunit also confirms the growing adoption of advanced decentralized infrastructures for very large-scale transactions.

This process allows whales to avoid overly liquid order books of CEXs while maintaining a certain relative anonymity, although the movements are publicly monitored.

An ETH accumulation strategy over several days

While the recent conversion of 2,000 BTC has attracted attention, it represents only one episode of a much larger and structured operation. According to Arkham Intelligence, this same actor had already transferred 1.1 billion dollars in bitcoin to a new wallet a few days earlier, thus initiating a massive ETH buying strategy via Hyperunit.

In a post shared on the social network X (formerly Twitter), Arkham states that this whale bought 2.5 billion dollars worth of ETH the previous week and is actively continuing its purchases.

Meanwhile, other signals confirm that several BTC whales are adopting a similar approach. For example, another actor took 75 million $ in long Leveraged positions on Ethereum, highlighting renewed interest in the asset.

More remarkably, a market veteran holding BTC dating back to the Satoshi era made a historic transfer of over 80,000 BTC (≈ 9 billion $) via Galaxy Digital, marking an unprecedented reactivation of assets inactive for a decade. Although this movement is distinct, it reflects an environment where long-term positions are being reconsidered on a very large scale.

All these signals invite careful reading of the current market structure. While bitcoin remains the foundational pillar of the ecosystem, the growing appeal of Ethereum, notably in the context of its recent price rise to a new all-time high, and the prospects related to ETFs or the technological evolution of the network, push some players to rebalance their portfolios. In the short term, this dynamic could increase volatility on BTC while consolidating ETH’s status as a strategic asset.

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