Grayscale Moves 9000 Bitcoin (BTC), Is a Selloff in View?

American digital assets management firm Grayscale Investments is moving large amounts of Bitcoin (BTC) from its wallet, a trend that has sparked a bearish thesis on Crypto X.

Insight into the Grayscale Bitcoin Movement

Large crypto transfers are not uncommon in the crypto ecosystem, especially with large whales dominating most of the corporations in the Web3 ecosystem. What is becoming unusual is Grayscale moving the large Bitcoin sums.

The insight into the transferred Bitcoin came from the crypto analytics platform Arkham Intelligence. A total of 9000 BTC has been moved, valued at approximately $385,000,000 at the current price mark of approximately $42777.78.

According to the on-chain insights shared by Arkham Intelligence, the transactions were split into 9 different segments with 1,000 BTC moved in each case. As a firm with a very large Bitcoin holding in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) that is now converted to a spot Exchange Traded Fund (ETF), it controls a lot of wallet addresses containing BTC.

According to the analytics, the 9 tranches of 1,000 BTC moved came from different Grayscale-owned wallets. The transactions were initiated at the same time in what appears to be a programmed order as the average dollar value of all the transactions moved came in at $42.79 million.

9000 BTC ($385M) moved from Grayscale wallets in the past hour.https://t.co/K7P3NmGZFH pic.twitter.com/MUpy3kGkoq

— Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) January 16, 2024

An intriguing observation, however, is the distribution of the funds to at least 3 wallets. 4,000 BTC was moved to a wallet address marked “36hGZ…6GoxF,” 3000 BTC was moved to an address labeled “3QwWz … .w5cV” with 1000 BTC each transferred to 2 other different wallets.

Background of the Transfer, Possible Selloff?

While these recurring transfers might generate a knee-jerk reaction to a possible selloff from investors, Grayscale was not explicit about the transfers.

However, as a firm with a fully functional spot Bitcoin ETF, Grayscale might be rebalancing its Bitcoin liquidity, hence necessitating the movement of the funds. Additionally, the firm might have sent the funds to the designated custodian for safekeeping, a practice that is notably not out of place for a spot Bitcoin ETF issuer.

The market is notably not showing any form of negative reaction to the BTC transfers as Bitcoin’s price and market capitalization are in a consolidation mode, jumping by 1.77% in the past 24 hours to $43,278.53 and $848,596,213,722 respectively.

Bitcoin is bouncing off its 24-hour low of $42,086.00, an indication that buyers are now re-energized for a new bullish leg up.