zycrypto.com
A crypto whale presumed to be binance itself moving funds from its cold wallets has just been detected swinging into action, and now the crypto community is buzzing with speculations. What’s even more interesting is that the crypto in question is Ethereum. It’s been a while since someone moved a large batch of ETH.
The Move
The transaction in question relates to a movement of about 988,888 ETH from an unknown address to the Binance exchange. The coins moved are worth about $134 Million, something that’s attracted a lot of attention especially from the crypto enthusiasts on Twitter.
Since Whale Alert, a twitter handle, reported about it, various Twitter users have out to contribute on the thread. So far, various people seem to have their own opinions on the matter, with some alluding the move to a dumping trick while others take it as just another normal move by the exchange though it’s not yet clear why they moved the funds.
Transaction Cost
The huge number of ETH tokens moved may capture attention, but it’s the transaction cost that’s really making some people drool. For a transaction involving a whole $28 million worth of Ethereum, the transaction costs charged are just around 0.000273 ETH. That’s just about $0.04.
As a matter of fact, for such a huge amount of money moved, a traditional bank would have charged tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars as transactions fees. Once again, we see just how much money someone can save by using cryptocurrencies. The full details of the transaction can be found here.
Ethereum Hard Forks
This whale activity comes just days before a major upgrade on the Ethereum network scheduled for later this week. The Ethereum developer team plans to run two upgrades, the Constantinople hard fork, and the St. Petersburg upgrade. The Constantinople hard fork is meant to upgrade the Ethereum network and make it more scalable by changing its economic policy and fee structure. As such, the ETH mining rewards will drop from the current 3 ETH to 2 ETH.
On the other hand, the St. Petersburg is meant to roll back a previous upgrade from the test net. So far, various crypto exchanges like Binance, Kraken, OKEx, Huobi, and Coinbase have announced that they will support the Constantinople hard fork.
At the moment, it’s yet unclear whether the large ETH transfers have anything to do with the upcoming hard fork or the current market pullback after a good weekend for the crypto market.