An early ether buyer who paid just $18.83 per coin nine years ago has sold 3,000 ETH worth about $7.23 million, a 128x return.
Key Takeaways
- A wallet holding 3,000 ETH bought at $18.83 sent it all to Kraken on Oct. 22, for a 128x gain.
- Analysts link it to a second wallet that sold 3,000 ETH since September, about $15.85 million in total.
- The exit lands as ether ETFs bleed outflows and Bitmine caps its buying at 5% of ETH supply.
The Trail
The math on this trade seems almost absurd, with onchain data from the wallet’s Arkham explorer page showing 3,000 ETH leaving a Gemini hot wallet roughly nine years ago, worth about $56,480 at the time. That works out to $18.83 per ether.
The coins passed subsequently through two intermediate wallets and then sat untouched for eight years, and on Oct. 22, the full 3,000 ETH finally moved to a Kraken deposit address. Lookonchain valued the stack at $7.23 million, which puts ether near $2,410 and the return at 128x.
Put another way, every $1 this investor put into ether in 2017 came back as about $128. Few asset classes, crypto or otherwise, have paid like that over the same stretch.
The Same Whale Twice?
This is probably not the first time this buyer has cashed out, given that on Sept. 29, onchain analysts tracked a different dormant wallet with an almost identical profile, i.e. 3,000 ETH bought around $18.80 in 2017, withdrawn from Gemini. That wallet had already sold 2,000 ETH at an average of $3,096 for $6.19 million, then sent another 1,000 ETH to Kraken.
Prominent Chinese analyst Ai Yi connected the two wallets, saying the purchase timing, funding source and deposit patterns all matched. If they belong to the same entity, Ai Yi estimates the buyer has sold about 6,000 ETH since August 2025, worth roughly $15.85 million at an average deposit price of $2,642.42. That is a return of more than 139x on the combined position.
A Look at the Conditions the Buyer Is Selling Into
The timing lines up with a market where large capital is pulling back from ether. Spot ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have been posting persistent outflows even as bitcoin funds have drawn billions. Tom Lee’s Bitmine, the largest corporate ether buyer, said it will stop buying ETH once it holds 5% of supply, putting a ceiling on one of the market’s steadiest bids.
There is also a counterweight in the mix and holders are locking up more ether than ever, with a Bitwise report showing a record 43.8 million ETH staked. Supply that sits in staking contracts is supply that is not for sale, which partly offsets old wallets taking profit.
Lastly, it bears mentioning that wallets that have not moved since 2017 carry a special weight with traders since they rode out the 2018 crash, the 2022 bear market and every rally in between without selling. Consequently, when one finally does send coins to an exchange, the market reads it as a signal from someone with a very long and mature perspective.
That reading can and has been overdone, though, in recent years, and a nine-year holder taking a 128x profit may simply have hit a personal target, or needed the cash.