An Ethereum initial coin offering (ICO) participant has returned to the market by buying 8,492.8 ETH for $23.7 million, despite having sold a smaller holding near $2,010 six months ago.
The purchase was identified by on-chain analyst ai_9684xtpa, who tracked four stablecoin sell orders placed by wallet 0xBE42…0c5F on Cow Swap, a decentralised exchange aggregator that batches transactions. All four orders were completed on 21 September.
The wallet exchanged $23.73 million in stablecoins for the ETH at an average price of about $2,794 per coin. On-chain records show the stablecoins left the address between 15:29 and 15:37 UTC.
During the same period, the wallet repaid roughly 809 wrapped ether (WETH) of debt on Aave, a decentralised finance (DeFi) lending protocol, and withdrew approximately 8,876 ETH used as collateral. It now holds about 16,773 ETH.
With ether currently trading at $2,720, the newly acquired coins are around $550,000 below their purchase price. The separate buyer that accumulated ETH over five days, however, remains comfortably in profit.
ICO-era holding
The whale received 38,800 ETH during Ethereum’s ICO at approximately $0.31 per coin. The tokens were distributed when the network launched in 2015, meaning the original holding cost about $12,028.
At yesterday’s local high near $2,800, the stake would have been worth about $106 million. That move marked ether’s first price above $2,800 since late January.
Wallets dating from Ethereum’s ICO are rarely active, making any transactions from them closely watched. Such addresses generally move funds to realise profits, but this wallet used its stablecoins to buy ETH.
The same address previously sold 1,923.05 Aave-wrapped ether for 3,866,637.83 USDC on 27 March, receiving $2,010.68 per coin. ETH closed that day at $1,992.
Another large accumulation was detected earlier on 21 September. An entity using newly created addresses bought 21,520 ETH, worth about $55.8 million, over five consecutive days beginning on 18 September.
The purchases ranged from $2,450 to $2,762, with an average price of $2,593, leaving the entity with roughly $3.25 million in unrealised gains. Four addresses linked to the entity acquired 6,247.2 ETH in the nine hours before the activity was identified by on-chain investigators.
The buyer funded the purchases by selling UBTC, Hyperliquid’s wrapped bitcoin. The strategy resembles that of a Hyperliquid whale that exchanged 1,107 BTC for 34,422 ETH, a transaction reported by Bitcoin.com News on 21 September, although there is no confirmation that both trades involved the same buyer.
Corporate demand has also increased. Tom Lee’s Bitmine added 27,562 ETH last week and now holds about 4.9% of ETH’s supply.
Spot ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs), by contrast, recorded $140 million in outflows in the week leading up to 18 September. Large wallets have therefore been the main force behind the rally, while bitcoin also rose to $87,395 yesterday.
