Bitcoin tumbles as whale investor shifts billions to Ethereum

Bitcoin slipped to its weakest level in more than a month after a major investor began unloading thousands of coins in favor of Ethereum.

Data from CryptoSlate show the asset trading at roughly $111,600 on Monday, down nearly 3% in a single day and its lowest mark since early July.

The sell-off erased gains from just a week earlier, when Bitcoin briefly rallied above $117,000 on speculation the Federal Reserve might cut interest rates in September.

Instead, heavy selling pressure from one of the network’s older and wealthier wallets reversed momentum and weighed on the broader market.

Whale dumps Bitcoin for Ethereum

According to Lookonchain, an early Bitcoin investor who originally received more than 100,000 BTC seven years ago has been actively rotating into Ethereum.

Over the past five days, the wallet deposited nearly 23,000 BTC, valued at about $2.6 billion, onto decentralized exchange Hyperliquid. Those sales were followed by the purchase of roughly 473,000 ETH worth $2.2 billion, along with the opening of a substantial long position.

The whale has since taken partial profits, closing more than 95,000 ETH longs at an average price of $4,735 to net $33 million.

Meanwhile, the proceeds have since been reinvested into additional ETH spot buys, totaling over 23,500 tokens valued at $108 million.

Despite trimming exposure, the address continues to hold more than 40,000 ETH in open long positions with over $11 million in unrealized gains

Hyperliquid leverages trading frenzy

The aggressive repositioning has also lifted trading activity on Hyperliquid, the largest decentralized perpetual exchange.

According to the platform, spot trading volumes on the platform reached a record $3.4 billion in 24 hours, placing it second among all centralized and decentralized venues for Bitcoin spot trading. BTC trading alone accounted for $1.5 billion in volume during that period.

It added:

“This [trading volume] surpassed Coinbase and Bybit BTC spot volumes combined and is close to on par with BTC/USDT on Binance.”

Meanwhile, the heavy activity helped Hyperliquid generate more than $4.7 million in trading fees in a single day. A portion of those fees was allocated to buybacks of the exchange’s native HYPE token, with its subsiidary, Unit, contributing almost $1.9 million to the process.

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