Key highlights:
- Two dormant wallets sent a combined 14,700 ETH, worth about $36.94 million, to OKX.
- The coins were bought in August and October 2021, when they were worth $56.9 million.
- The holder is currently sitting on a paper loss of $20 million.
A sleeping whale has sprung back into action, sending millions of dollars worth of Ethereum to an exchange despite sitting on a steep unrealized loss. Two wallets, said to belong to the same holder, moved14,700 ETH, worth $36.94 million at the current ETH price, to OKX on September 14.
Ethereum whale moves coins for the first time since 2021
Data showed that the transferred coins were bought back in 2021. One wallet received 5,000 ETH in August, 2021, while the second wallet got 9,700 ETH in October that year.
The wallets had been funded by the same source address at the time, which suggested the wallets belonged to a single holder. The whale emptied the assets into the same OKX deposit address on September 14.
Blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain was the first to flag the transfers, noting that each wallet also sent small test transactions of 1 ETH and 100 ETH, respectively, before the larger transfers went through.
Two wallets that had been dormant for over a year (possibly belonging to the same whale) deposited 14,700 $ETH ($36.94M) into #OKX over the past 9 hours.https://t.co/hAcIGTeK3zhttps://t.co/RqmiGoOSVQ pic.twitter.com/lsmxjj8qb3
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) September 15, 2026
Notably, when the coins were purchased, ETH was trading around $3,184 in August and near $4,220 in October. At those prices, the 14,700 ETH moved was worth $56.9 million at the time, compared to $36.9 million today. That works to a paper loss of $20 million.
Other old wallets are also cashing out
In another development, a separate wallet that received 1,500 ETH back in September 2021 sent 1,250 ETH to another exchange, MAX Exchange, on September 14, with an additional 249.99 ETH in the early hours of Tuesday. Selling at the current price would also lock in a loss of over 20%.
Furthermore, last week, another whale wallet sold 11,023 ETH for about $27.23 million using Wintermute to help facilitate the trade instead of selling directly on a public exchange order book. Routing a sale through a market maker usually signals an attempt to control how the trade could affect the market.
The most notable transaction was that of a mystery whale wallet that moved 167,855 ETH, worth about $408 million, into exchanges over a stretch of days in late August and early September. The entity offloaded the entire stash in batches even as ETH held up well.
Onchain trackers have continued to flag these wallet activities in the past couple of months, with old coins being moved across various exchanges.
Ethereum’s current price explains why many of these older wallets are choosing this time to move. ETH is trading around $2,479 today, down about 15% year to date, and about 48% below the record high of $4,946 it hit in August last year.
Source:: A Dormant 2021 Ethereum Whale Just Moved $37 to OKX After Sitting on a $20M Paper Loss