Over the weekend, a crypto whale withdrew over $206 million worth of Ethereum (ETH) from the Bitfinex exchange within a span of 16 hours, as reported by the tracker Lookonchain.
The address is believed to belong to Abraxas Capital Management, a United Kingdom-based investment firm specializing in cryptocurrencies since 2017. As of April 2024, Abraxas Capital Management manages over $2 billion in digital assets across three funds. It is reported that the firm moved the withdrawn ETH to Spark, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform, using it as collateral for the stablecoin DAI.
Subsequently, the address borrowed 101 million DAI from Spark, which was then converted into 101 million USDC and deposited into Binance.
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Spark offers various DeFi services, including SparkLend, a money market protocol focusing on DAI, and sDAI, a stablecoin providing passive income.
During the transaction, the price of Ethereum was $3,442. Despite a nearly 3% increase in the past week, ETH has seen a decline of nearly 10% over the last month and remains over 25% below its historical peak of $4,878 reached in November 2021.
This significant movement of Ethereum tokens underscores the important role of large investment managers in the crypto sphere. The use of DeFi platforms like Spark for such transactions highlights the increasing integration of traditional financial strategies with decentralized financial solutions. This development reflects a broader trend of established financial institutions increasingly adopting and utilizing DeFi and cryptocurrencies, signaling potential further advancement in the digital asset ecosystem.
