Mysterious Whale Buys 20,000 Ether on Crypto Exchange Binance

A mysterious whale has recently bought around 20,000 ether tokens, worth $4.3 million, on leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Estimates suggest the whale has accumulated 300,000 ETH over the last few weeks.

According to Su Zhu, the CEO of Three Arrows Capital, the Ethereum whale has been accumulating the cryptocurrency during its recent dip below the $200 mark, and has been helping it remain above it.

He’s back$ETH@binance pic.twitter.com/QfdpHrdu3S

— Su Zhu 🦁 (@zhusu) July 18, 2019

Some users speculated the whale was just adding a so-called “prop bid,” a move that attempts to manipulate the market by temporarily boosting a cryptocurrency’s price. It would involve the whale adding the order to attract attention and get other buyers entering the market, to then cancel its own order.

Evidence seems to suggest otherwise, however, as the whale’s order was filled and helped the price of ether rise. The order came, according to Finance Magnates, days after a crypto YouTuber claimed a sell order of 15,000 ETH on crypto exchange Bitstamp saw the cryptocurrency’s price drop.

Thanks to the whale’s orders, Ethereum’s ether is currently trading at $217, after rising about 0.6% in the last 24-hour period. Earlier today the cryptocurrency’s price jumped from about $205 to $225 in about an hour.

Whales have, as CryptoGlobe has been covering, been seemingly accumulating cryptocurrency over the past few months. Earlier this month a 15% drop in bitcoin’s price saw whales accumulate more BTC, as data from Coinbase showed its users with the largest balances (the top 10%) were mostly buying the cryptocurrency.

Curiously, a research report from May of this year published by crypto surveillance firm Chainalysis revealed only 376 whales held about one third of all ETH in circulation. These whales were shown to not move their ether very often, as they’re holding their crypto and not actively trading it.