Dormant whale awakens after 8 years, moves over $116 million of Ethereum to Kraken

An Ethereum wallet address that has been dormant for eight years recently moved its entire stash of 61,216 ETH, valued at $116 million at spot rates as of July 19, to an address on Kraken, a crypto exchange.

Initially worth approximately $20k at Genesis, ETH prices have since surged, lifting the entire stash to roughly $116 million over the years.

Money on the move

Etherscan data verified the pre-mined 61,216 ETH movement to a Kraken wallet address on July 18 at 7:30 pm Eastern Time. Surprisingly, the transfer of $116 million worth of ETH incurred $1.5 in transaction fees.

Before sending, he first sent 0.05 ETH as a test to the Kraken address.

Coinciding with this big move, ETH prices are down 0.19% in the last day, currently at $1,900.71.

In April, there was a significant event where at least four wealthy investors, called “whales,” made large transfers of Bitcoin from their digital wallets to exchanges or other wallets.

Typically, whales hold significant amounts of tokens, which can greatly affect a token’s price and overall perception whenever it is moved.

Making crypto wallets as simple as Ethereum

During his speech at the Ethereum Community Conference (ETHCC) in Paris, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, praised modern account abstraction as a solution that is remarkably elegant.

This upgrade does not require any modifications to the underlying protocol, making the transition seamless and without the need for such changes.

The concept of account abstraction has been in development since 2015, even preceding the launch of Ethereum itself.

It aims to replace Externally Owned Wallets (EOAs) with smart contract-based wallets. If successfully implemented, it could simplify crypto wallet management to the simplicity of an email account.