A Bitcoin whale deposited around $61 million worth of bitcoins to their Coinbase Pro account on Friday for liquidation, according to Arkham Intelligence. The wallet 12EMDoUhaNCuWZeeT6ey61AkjKyzmjV2m3 moved close to 1,000 bitcoins that laid dormant for six years.
A Bitcoin whale represents a wallet that holds no less than 1,000 bitcoins. Over the past few weeks, whales have liquidated large amounts of bitcoin to realize profits as the asset’s price has risen tremendously. On Thursday, a Satoshi-era Bitcoin wallet moved 50 bitcoins to Binance, which it received as mining rewards in 2010 when bitcoin was just $0.05.
In Friday’s instance, the wallet acquired their bitcoins at a collective price of $6.6 million, marking steep profits with this liquidation. Bitcoin holders usually move their assets to centralized exchanges (CEXs) for selling purposes. Such selloffs make it harder for bitcoin’s price to rise again, as it has dropped to slightly below $61,000 at press time. It fluctuated over $70,000 in early June.
Beyond whales, miners have also been selling their stockpiles due to the Bitcoin halving. Since their mining rewards are cut by half, with each block earning them 3.125 bitcoins from 6.25 bitcoins, they are selling their holdings to derive profits when bitcoin’s price is still high. Some analysts feel it may drop to $50,000 before seeing upward momentum again.
Even the German government’s moves have kept bitcoin from going up as it has been liquidating large swaths of the asset and will liquidate 50,000 bitcoins by the time it is finished. Other macroeconomic factors include a well-performing US dollar and investors moving away to less risky investments like tech stocks.
The latter has prevented bitcoin from registering meaningful gains despite Personal Consumption Expenditure (CPE) data revealing that inflation has cooled down. Usually, reduced inflation rates mean cryptocurrencies perform well. Nevertheless, monetary policies have strengthened the dollar while reducing inflation rates, and a strong dollar is keeping crypto prices from rallying upwards.
