Mysterious $1.88 Billion Bitcoin Transfer Stuns World's Largest Exchange

An unexpected twist emerged on-chain when, according to data from Whale Alert, 30,000 BTC, a colossal sum equivalent to $1.88 billion at current prices, was transferred to the world's largest crypto exchange, Binance. 

Thus, from address "3E97A" were initially sent 75177.38 BTC, which is worth $4.73 billion, to two other addresses, "3PXBET" and "1Pzaq," with the latter being Binance cold wallet's address, which received 30,000 BTC out of the initial sum. 

After that, as the transaction history shows, 233 BTC were sent to another cold wallet of the black-and-yellow crypto behemoth. The 45,177 BTC received by "3PXBET" were left untouched and are still on this address.

Such large transfers on the exchange often cause fear and doubt among market participants when a large entity transfers such colossal sums of Bitcoin to an exchange with an intention to sell it.

What is this mix of addresses and transactions?

Data from Arkham Intelligence provides the bigger picture. According to its on-chain information, the address that sent the initial sum and the one that received 30,000 BTC both belong to Binance. The sender address is also a cold wallet.  

Source: Arkham Intelligence

Basically, it is just a technical inner transfer of the exchange between its own wallets. Should anyone worry? Probably not.

Meanwhile, the effect on the price of Bitcoin that this transfer caused was indeed as expected, when market participants see a large Binance deposit. In a minute, a massive red candle took the BTC price down 0.44%. 

BTC to USD by CoinMarketCap

To be fair, though, it had already been falling for the past two days.