cryptopolitan.com
An old whale with around $5B in $BTC holdings has been rotating into $ETH in the past week. The closely watched wallet moved another $1.1B worth of $BTC, sending the funds to Hyperunit.
The crypto market is watching one of the most notable whale rotations between $BTC and $ETH. One of the older wallets, with $5.5B in $BTC reserves, has been moving the coins after years of holding.
The whale already built a sizeable $ETH reserve valued at $2.5B in the past week, as the price of $BTC weakened, while $ETH retained its value.
Arkham Intelligence noticed another large-scale transfer from some of the whale’s known addresses.
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
— Arkham (@arkham) August 29, 2025
One of the addresses was used as an intermediary to move 10,000 $BTC. The transfer originated from a reserve wallet, which holds another $1.6B in $BTC. The whale’s reserves contain another $3.5B in an address that was last active a week ago.
The last address was emptied out in late August, with only dust amounts of $BTC remaining. As a whole, the whale has a remaining balance of over 14,495 $BTC on the largest wallet.
On-chain data shows the main entity withdrew 85,947 $BTC from HTX, OKX, the ViaBTC mining pool, the Bixin mining pool, as well as Binance, with some of the coins aged up to 8 years. The holdings did not move during the bear market, but became active only during the 2025 price cycle.
Whale moved funds as $ETH doubled in value in $BTC terms
The move of funds happened below the $BTC peak, but just as $ETH was showing more decisive strength. Little is known about the whale, except one of the addresses has been cited on social media in connection to now-deleted meme coin content.
The whale’s funds initially originated from the HTX exchange, first funded five years ago. The whale is not ancient, but the holdings belonged to the 3-5 year cohort, which has shown readiness to avoid panic-selling. Despite the long holding period, the whale is hardly a maximalist.
The whale rotated into $ETH as the token was trading at a one-month high against $BTC, after months of trading around 0.020 $BTC. $ETH doubled its value against the leading coin, despite expectations of a permanent slide to a lower range. $ETH is still down from its peak of over 0.08 $BTC.
$BTC whale built both spot and futures positions on $ETH
The signature move of the whale is the usage of Hyperliquid’s spot market to shift between $BTC and $ETH. Despite this, the whale’s move caused at least $4,000 drop in the price of $BTC in the past week, adding to the downward pressure. At the same time, the whale adds to the overall interest in building $ETH reserves. As Cryptopolitan reported, the whale’s moves added to the growing $ETH scarcity.
Before the latest transfer, the whale held 220,451 $ETH. This would make the whale the owner of the fifth-largest $ETH treasury. The next purchase will probably push the whale’s holdings above the reserves of the Ethereum Foundation.
The recent rollover into spot $ETH and Hyperliquid positions points to two main entities, most probably with the same person or service controlling them, based on using a similar strategy through Hyperliquid.