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Popular blockchain sleuth Whale Alert, which tracks down large cryptocurrency transactions and reveals the details on its website and X account, has published data about three hefty consecutive Bitcoin transfers. They were linked to two major crypto trading platforms, Binance and Kraken.
Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of BTC have been moved over the past five hours.
$203.3 million in Bitcoin leave Binance and Kraken
The above-mentioned source of on-chain data revealed that over the past five hours, three Bitcoin stashes have left the Binance and Kraken exchanges. Two of these withdrawals were made from Kraken and one from the world’s largest crypto trading venue, Binance.
All three went to wallets, which Whale Alert targets as anonymous. The Binance withdrawal and the second one from Kraken took place over the past hour. They carried 896 BTC, 530 BTC and 504 BTC to unknown blockchain addresses.
Those anonymous withdrawals took part right after the massive Bitcoin transactions conducted by Tether from the Bitfinex exchange.
Tether CEO explains massive Bitcoin transfer
Paolo Ardoino, the chief executive officer at stablecoin issuer Tether commented on the massive Bitcoin transaction as a staggering 10,500 BTC went from Bitfinex (an exchange that shares a management team with Tether) to an anonymous new wallet.
This amount of Bitcoin exceeded $1 billion at the time of the transfer. A similar Bitcoin chunk, containing 14,000 BTC (and worth 1,462,134,302 USD) was also withdrawn from that exchange around 12 hours earlier. Therefore, Tether has moved around 37,229 BTC. That is the equivalent of slightly less than $4 billion in fiat.
Ardoino said that those transfers (and a few smaller ones that had taken place over the past 24 hours) constituted part of the prefunding for SoftBank's entry into Twenty One Capital (XXI). This is the recently created Bitcoin-focused investment fund that emerged the market in April.
Strategy’s BTC holdings surge above $61 billion
However, the purpose of this fund is to hold Bitcoin rather than speculate it. It follows a similar playbook to Michael Saylor’s company, Strategy. Aside from Tether, the pre-funding is shared by SoftBank and Bitfinex as well.
As reported by U.Today earlier, Strategy’s total Bitcoin holdings have surpassed a stunning $61 billion after it acquired 705 BTC this week. The company now holds 580,955 Bitcoin valued at $61,182,404,392.50.
Vladislav Sopov
U.Today Editorial Team