A significant Ethereum (ETH) transaction caught the attention of crypto analysts over the weekend. On-chain data revealed a single entity withdrew over $206 million worth of ETH from Bitfinex. What is this whale up to?
Lookonchain suggests the whale is likely Abraxas Capital Management. it is a famous UK-based investment firm that specializes in crypto assets.
Abraxas has been active in the crypto space since 2017. As of April 2024, its three digital asset funds manage over $2 billion.
The whale's actions didn't stop at withdrawal. There was a serious game to be carried out, that someone must have planned meticulously.
So at first, the ETH was deposited into Spark, a DeFi infrastructure provider.
This move appears strategic. The deposited ETH serves as collateral for the stablecoin DAI.
No wonder, our whale then borrowed 101 million DAI from Spark. But the next move was kind of surprising, if not to say unpredictable. This borrowed DAI was then swapped for 101 million USDC. That's a second most popular stablecoin in the world, in case you forgot.
The final step saw the USDC deposited into Binance, the world's leading crypto exchange.
This series of transactions demonstrates complex maneuvering within the crypto ecosystem, basically, our whale definitely knew what to do.
Spark offers multiple DeFi products. These include SparkLend, a DAI-centric money market protocol, and sDAI, a yield-bearing stablecoin.
At the time of writing, ETH trades at $3,442. While up 3% over seven days, it's down 10% month-on-month. ETH remains 29% below its November 2021 all-time high of $4,878.
USDC and DAI rank as the second and third-largest stablecoins by market cap. Both aim to maintain a 1:1 peg with the US dollar.