- Dormant Whale Awakens: A long-inactive Ethereum ICO participant moved 30,000 ETH (~$47.8M) on April 17 after over 3 years of silence, sparking a series of large transactions and renewed market attention.
- Major Transfers With Minimal Impact: Despite selling 16,500 ETH (~$29.4M), Ethereum’s price remained stable and even rose from $1,620 to over $1,840, showing strong market absorption.
- Whale Still Holding: The wallet still retains 13,500 ETH (~$24.8M), meaning further activity could be on the horizon.
Dormant Ethereum Whale Resurfaces, Moves $47M+ After Years of Silence
Well, one of Ethereum’s OG wallets just woke up—and with a bang.
After sitting quiet for more than three years, a participant from Ethereum’s 2015 ICO finally broke their silence, moving around 30,000 ETH (yeah, that’s nearly $48 million) starting on April 17. The move kicked off a string of big transactions that have the crypto community talking.
Wallet From Ethereum’s Genesis Phase Comes Alive
So here’s the backstory: this whale originally snagged 76,000 ETH during Ethereum’s ICO at a bargain price—about $0.31 per coin. That whole stash was dropped into a wallet (0xD612…9426) nearly 10 years ago. It stayed totally inactive. No peep. Not a single move… until April 2025 rolled around.
On April 17, the silence broke. Boom—30,000 ETH transferred, including 3,000 ETH (worth $4.78 million at the time) sent to Kraken. Not long after that, the wallet started spraying ETH across several new addresses. One of ’em saw a massive 60,000 ETH transaction. Some others—like 0x738e…4EAaF and 0x96f5…10be7—also received chunks.
There’s even chatter that some of these wallets had ties to old-school exchanges like Poloniex, so this could be someone dusting off their crypto bags from the early days.
ETH Market Shrugs Off Whale Dumping
Even with all this selling, Ethereum barely flinched. Since April 17, the whale has dumped 16,500 ETH, pocketing nearly $29.4 million in the process. These sales came in waves—1,500 ETH here, 3,000 ETH there—spread out through April and early May. The average selling price? Roughly $1,779 per ETH.
But despite all this, the market… didn’t really care.
On the day of the first big sale (April 18), ETH was trading at $1,620. A few weeks later, it was pushing $1,842. In fact, as of May 4, the token hovered in a tight range between $1,816 and $1,845, with a fat $7.2 billion in daily volume and a $222 billion market cap.
The wallet still holds 13,500 ETH, by the way—worth about $24.8 million. So we might not have seen the last of this whale just yet.
