Prescient Bitcoin Whale Moves $244M in BTC to Crypto Exchange. Has BTC Price Topped?

A large bitcoin [BTC] investor sent 7,000 bitcoin – worth roughly $244 million – to crypto exchange Bitfinex late Thursday, potentially to realize profits from earlier purchases.

Whales are crypto investors who control large amounts of digital assets. Their crypto purchases and sales may have a sizable impact on markets, thus crypto watchers closely follow their behavior to anticipate market movements. Moving tokens to exchanges usually signals intention to sell, however, blockchain data doesn't show what happens with the tokens once it's at the exchange.

The moves of this whale are of particular note as whoever controls the wallet appears to have a good sense of timing. BitInfoCharts data shows the holder accumulated 46,500 bitcoin between November 2022 and January 2023 at prices under $20,000 per token versus the current price just under $35,000.

The owner then moved to offload a total of 36,500 tokens onto Bitfinex in late March and early April at what was then roughly around the high for the year near $30,000. The holder then took advantage of bitcoin's decline to $26,000 in May to accumulate another 2,000 bitcoin.

Blockchain data shows that those 46,500 bitcoins in March made the wallet the 14th-largest BTC owner globally.

The whale's latest transaction on Thursday is an indication that at least some investors who bought bitcoin at lower prices are on the move to lock in profits after the crypto's spectacular run-up in October from $27,000.

The $35,000 price level has proved to be a key resistance for any upward movement for the last two weeks, with any attempt for a breakout met with heavy sale orders pushing the price back down.