Members of the community are curious about the quantity of ETH sent just one month before the Merge; some think it will be dumped, while others say it’s for staking.
After three years of hibernation, an Ethereum whale wallet that took part in the genesis initial coin offering (ICO) and acquired over 150,000 Ether (ETH) in 2014 was reactivated on August 14.
As the price of ether soared to a new three-month high of nearly $2,000, the whale address sent 145,000 ETH to numerous wallets. The transfers were often performed in installments of 5,000 ETH with a few transfers exceeding 10,000 ETH. The wallet address presently has 0.107 ETH in its balance, and the total value of the transferred Ether exceeds $280 million.
The whale wallet has only been used twice since the ICO; the first time was in July 2019 when it sent 5,000 ETH to the exchange Bitfinex while Ether was trading at $219, with a transaction value of just over $1 million. The 145,000 ETH transfer was the whale wallet’s second use since the ICO.
Many in the community speculated that the large quantity of ETH moving around could have been dumped before the Merge, the official switchover from the current proof-of-work-based blockchain to a proof-of-stake one. It’s important to note that the majority of transactions, as opposed to exchanges, are made to unidentified wallets.
A $270 million selling pressure is not deemed big enough to start a market dump, even if the whale eventually decides to sell their 145,000 ETH. Others think the whale may be attempting to stake their ETH in an effort to join the PoS network as a validator and earn passive income.
Following the successful integration of the Goerli testnet to the Beacon Chain (the PoS chain activated in 2020), the last exercise before the official switch, Ethereum’s move to a proof-of-stake network is scheduled for September 15.
Since Ethereum’s launch in 2015, The Merge is regarded as one of the most important updates. The three-phase transition process started in 2020, and after multiple setbacks and testnet integrations, Ethereum is now scheduled to switch to PoS in the third week of September.