Doubt Whale Alert account was hacked when reporting $9 billion BTC to be transferred at once

By Emma 12/6/19 2:21 PM

It is fair to say that the Bitcoin whales had a reputation as the operator when it came to the crypto market.

With a keen eye on training on every major exchange on the market, Whale Alert’s co-founder and CEO, Frank, analyzed how bitcoin’s price could actually connect to these large transfers.

“Whale deals can have a really profound effect on market prices. […] Knowing where the money is coming in is a great way to predict stuff.”

Whale Alert: More than $9 billion BTC transferred

Crypto whales, as usual, became headline news in the community this week.

Whale Alert has recorded an incredible number of 22 BTC transfers, each worth $ 410 million, moved across multiple wallets. The cause of this move is still a mystery.

Large transfers of Bitcoin are expected, but on-chain movements are increasingly making people astonished. A major market player has consistently moved $ 410M between wallet addresses. In total, 1,224,452 BTC, worth of more than $ 9 billion, was transferred back and forth in just 15 minutes.

A strange incident caused the Twitter account for Whale Alert to be flooded with updates.

Source: Whale Alert/ Twitter

Reaction from the crypto community

The crypto community’s first reaction was that something was wrong with the Whale Alert account.

@whale_alert 22 transferred of #bitcoin (every time transfeered about 55,000 BTC)right now,is your system broken or really somebody do big thing???

— Coinicle – 數位資產交易所 (@BtfeOulYN1HkPKz) December 6, 2019

Most of these addresses are new and BTC was held there for less than a minute before being transferred back.

uh wow, add it all up via @whale_alert and nearly $10 billion in BTC has moved around in the last 15 minutes https://t.co/5NrX3Cj5bR

— Zack Seward (@zackseward) December 6, 2019

Whales are market players who own huge amounts of wealth. They are said to be able to manipulate prices by selling those assets to the market to buy back more right after the price plummeted.

Some have speculated that it is a clear sign that the market is about to suffer an intense downtrend. At best, this is merely a whale game to clog the Whale Alert.

Finally, Whale Alert provided an explanation of these large BTC transactions.

“These transactions are very likely to change transactions. We will reduce the amount of these being shown”.

These transactions are very likely change transactions. We will reduce the amount of these being shown. https://t.co/pTLFDrBWx7

— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) December 6, 2019

Analyst The Moon, when commenting on some BTC movements (slightly over $ 1 billion), said that the total payout was only $ 6.40. No banks are capable of competing with that.

Big #Bitcoin transactions in the past few days with EXTREMELY low fees:

46,000 BTC ($337 million), fee: $0.40.
43,500 BTC ($313 million), fee: $1,00.
57,000 BTC ($415 million), fee: $5,00.

If you add these together, then $1,07 billion was moved for a fee of $6,40! ?

— The Moon (@themooncarl) December 5, 2019

In the comments thread, a Bitcoin fan pointed out that XRP would not be able to transfer so much money due to a lack of liquidity and due to being concentrated.

Bittrex transfers?

Crypto analytics and data company Glassnode reported that the Bitcoin network has just recorded a new on-chain volume record due to the massive BTC transfer by a leading U.S. cryptocurrency exchange.

Specifically, over an hour-long period, Bittrex transferred a series of 21 BTC transactions (about $ 9 billion), each transferring ~ 56,000 BTC. Each transaction costs about 0.00011760, or about $ 0.87. This means that in total, Bittrex has transferred a huge amount of BTC for just over $ 18.

This $8.9 billion spike in on–chain volume was caused by @BittrexExchange moving a large amount of #bitcoin several times – a series of 21 transactions within one hour, each moving ~56,000 $BTC.

The first transaction in this sequence was: https://t.co/6zNGp7pwC3 https://t.co/kmc3ElnK5R

— glassnode (@glassnode) December 5, 2019

Bittrex did not make a statement about why it moved such a huge stockpile but announced the scheduled maintenance time on Thursday.

Although large Bitcoin transfers can sometimes trigger alarms between traders, crypto movements made by exchanges are not likely to affect the market.