Whales Send $152M Bitcoin To Coinbase In Series Of Rapid Transfers

A series of high-value Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) transfers to cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global Inc (NASDAQ: COIN) on Thursday.

What Happened: According to data from blockchain wallet tracker Whale Alert, 2,000 BTC worth $85.6 million was sent to Coinbase from an unknown wallet.

 2,000 #BTC (85,634,451 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to #Coinbasehttps://t.co/zxtCkgEGd6

— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) March 24, 2022

The transaction was followed by two more whale transfers of 1,045 BTC, worth $44 million, and 564 BTC, worth $23.7 million.

Why It Matters: Blockchain analytics firm Santiment observed that coins were moving to exchanges in “rapid fashion” as a result of a market-wide pump on Thursday.

Coins are moving on to exchanges in rapid fashion as a reaction to this pump. Here is a leaderboard of percent coins moved compared to normal:$DUSK - 868,000% inflow$BOSON - 11,000%$FET - 6,000%$TRAC - 4,000%$STMX - 3,000%$TRB - 3,000%https://t.co/VxHn9Hbssw pic.twitter.com/7Hr7XwYSKB

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) March 22, 2022

Altcoins in particular saw a large number of inflows to exchanges, with some tokens recording exchange inflows increasing more than 10,000%.

When market participants move coins to exchanges, it is usually used as collateral when trading with leverage or transferred on-chain for the purpose of selling.

Since Coinbase doesn’t offer leverage trading on its platform, market participants speculated that the BTC transfers were for the purpose of profit-taking.

See Also: Bitcoin Whale Just Transferred $31M BTC From Gemini To Binance

Price Action: According to data from Benzinga Pro, Bitcoin traded at $43,997, up 2.6% in the last 24 hours at the time of writing on Friday. Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) was trading at $3,119, up 0.29% over the same period.