Dormant Ethereum whale stirs, sending $116M worth of ETH to Kraken

An address containing 61,216 ETH that participated in Ethereum’s initial coin offering (ICO) has sent all the assets valued at $116 million to the Kraken exchange.

After more than eight years of dormancy, the wallet initiated the transfer, which took place on July 18. The whale first sent a test transaction of 0.05 ETH to the Kraken address before sending all of the balance to the same address.

Blockchain analyst Lookonchain first reported the transaction, noting that the address received all of the assets at Ethereum Genesis. The whale spent less than $300,000 to purchase the holdings as ETH was trading for $0.31 at the time.

Despite ETH trading at nearly $2,000 at the time of writing, the investor has seen an over 40,000% increase due to the asset’s positive price movement.

The whale’s gain would have been much higher if it had sold when ETH traded at its peak of $4,864 in November 2021.

Meanwhile, the whale’s ETH movement has not impacted the digital asset’s price performance in the last 24 hours, with ETH being relatively stable at $1,900, according to CryptoSlate’s data.

Earlier in the year, increased activity was noted from several previously dormant Bitcoin wallets, which sparked concerns about potential security breaches.

Ethereum ICO

Ethereum had its initial coin offering in 2014, with the Ethereum Foundation issuing 60 million ETH to early investors and using the $18.3 million raised from the ICO to develop the Ethereum network.

Since the ICO, the Ethereum network has seen several developments, including its transition from a Proof of Work blockchain to a Proof of Stake network last year.