A large holder of Ethereum (ETH), inactive for about nine years, transferred nearly $400 million in 'ether' to the American exchange Gemini. According to the analytical service Arkham Intelligence, over the past three days, five transactions totaling 135,284 ETH have been made from the address '0xb5a…168d6'.
The last two transfers totaling nearly 85.3 thousand ETH were made on the evening of January 26, two days after the first series of transactions of 50 thousand ETH. At the exchange rate of 12:30 MSK on January 27 (around $2.9 thousand), the total amount exceeded $392 million. The transfer to the exchange is not a 100% proof of coin sale, but the transaction to the exchange address implies the option of sale.
The 'ether' coins were received by the user in 2017 through a deposit from the Bitfinex exchange when ETH was worth about $90. Thus, his assets at that time were valued at nearly $12.2 million, indicating that the value of his ETH has increased more than 30 times. At present, there is less than $100 left in obscure cryptocurrencies at the address '0xb5a…168d6'.
About a week ago, a similar transfer was made by a large Bitcoin holder who had been inactive for 13 years. The Bitcoin address held 909 BTC (about $80 million at the rate of $88 thousand). The coins started arriving in his wallet when their price was less than $7 — 13,900 times lower than today. Then the wallet owner bought more cryptocurrency from December 2012 to April 2013, when Bitcoin was trading in the range of about $12 to $130.
Frequent transfers of bitcoins by early holders began to be recorded in the summer of 2025, against the backdrop of the asset's price rising to new records. In July, untouched bitcoins that had been held for 15 years were withdrawn, having increased in value by 850,000 times by that point. In September, 1000 bitcoins that had been sitting since 2014 were transferred, on which the owner earned over $100 million.
