An early mover in the Ethereum market just made another big splash. This digital “whale,” who snapped up a massive amount of ETH when it was first offered, decided to lighten their load this Monday. The move came as Ethereum, the second-largest digital coin, soared past the $4,200 mark.
This investor’s digital wallet first saw funds during Ethereum’s initial coin offering, or ICO. That was over ten years ago. Now, with prices jumping, they’re selling off some of those ETH tokens.
The wallet, linked to that original ICO buyer, sent 2,300 ETH to the Kraken crypto exchange early on Monday. That haul is worth around $9.6 million today. On-chain analyst Lookonchain flagged this transaction.
An ICO participant who received 20,000 ( cost $6,200, now $86.6M) just sold another 2,300 ($9.91M) 20 minutes ago, leaving him with 1,623 ($6.99M).https://t.co/Rv0RcDPtgH pic.twitter.com/ffxwgXUDEg
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain)
Let’s rewind to the Ethereum ICO. It happened between July and September 2014. The goal was to raise money to build the Ethereum network. During that sale, over 60 million ETH tokens found new homes. The average price? A mere $0.31 per ETH.
Folks paid in Bitcoin back then. Early on, one Bitcoin could snag you 2,000 ETH. That rate later changed to 1,337 ETH for each Bitcoin due to price shifts. All told, the ICO pulled in about $18.3 million, or 31,531 Bitcoins. Ethereum officially went live in July 2015 after the successful fundraiser. This ICO was open to anyone, anywhere, with no limits for investors. For those who got in early, the payoff has been huge. With ETH now at about $4,204, their initial investment has grown over 12,000 times. That’s according to CoinGecko data from when this report was written.
Sending these ETH tokens to Kraken likely means this early investor is cashing out. Lookonchain pointed out that this individual first grabbed 20,000 ETH during the ICO, over a decade ago. That original stash would be worth $84 million today.
This isn’t their first rodeo. On-chain data from Arkham Intelligence shows this unknown person has been moving parts of their ETH holdings to exchanges for years. They sent 250 ETH in December 2024, another 1,000 ETH in February 2024, and 3,000 ETH in November 2023.
Even after this recent sale, the wallet still holds 1,623 ETH. That’s roughly $6.8 million worth. We don’t know who owns this wallet or why they made this move. But the timing is interesting.
The entire crypto market is on a high. Ethereum, as the second-biggest digital currency by market value, has jumped over 50% in just 30 days. It’s now hitting price highs last seen in 2021. This surge is largely thanks to new interest from big institutions. We’re seeing this in exchange-traded fund (ETF) flows and the rapid growth of Ethereum treasuries.