- A Solana whale gained significant profit, growing a $27M investment to nearly $180M through a four-year staking strategy.
- The whale has transferred 100,000 SOL (worth $14M) to Binance, signaling potential offloading of assets.
- Solana’s staking reached $53B, surpassing Ethereum, sparking debate within the crypto community about market implications.
Blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain indicates that a major Solana whale has apparently started to liquidate part of the holdings after a very profitable four year staking strategy. The position of the address, which staked almost one million SOL tokens back in 2021, has increased both in term of volume and value over time.
Whale Transfers 100,000 Solana To Binance Exchange
The wallet has started to transfer 100,000 SOL (about $14M) to Binance, which lookonchain reported, so it will be withdrawing into offloading activity. Generally, the transfers to an exchange are interpreted as an intent to sell.
When Solana traded around $27 per token, the whale initially put his money in around $27 million. And over the course of four years, the amount staked holdings have reached around 1.29 million SOL. The value of the wallet is nearly $180 million now that Solana trades at around $140.
By April 22, the whale has unstaked 100,000 tokens, while holding about 1.19 million SOL (worth around $166 million). Overall unrealized profit from this is more than $153 million from holding and compounding the staking rewards during the extended period.
Largest Single Day Unlock Of Staked SOL
This comes soon after the high profile staking event in the first week of June. Arkham Intelligence data shows that on April 4 four wallets which staked $37M in SOL in 2021 were ‘unlocked’ and now they have their tokens. In fact, it was ‘the largest single day unlock of staked SOL,’ with SOL tokens worth over $206 million at the time of the unlock. After the unlock, around $50 million worth of tokens were sold.
Staking milestones were on the horizon, alongside whale activity increasing, Sol briefly surpassed Ethereum in market capitalization of staking. In April 20, Solana reached the mark of over $53 billion staked value, briefly overtaking Ethereum. Ethereum however, regained its throne quickly.
The debate within the crypto community was sparked by the brief flip. Some read Solana’s surge in staking as a bullish signal while others stated carefully that going over Ethereum can have unintended market implications on Solana network.