In brief

  • Crypto exchange Bittrex has just moved nearly $500 million in Bitcoin.
  • The exchange paid just $1.51 in fees, for two large transactions.
  • Bittrex once caused an $8.9 billion spike in on-chain activity.

Crypto exchange Bittrex has just made two large Bitcoin (BTC) transactions, moving coins from its main exchange to another wallet, before sending them back to its original wallet. And it barely paid anything to do so.

Earlier today, the exchange moved 48,952 BTC, worth $491 million at the time, according to blockchain records—first pointed out by Whale Alert on Twitter.

But despite these two huge transactions, the cost was minimal. The exchange paid $0.67 in fees for the first transaction, and $0.84 for the second—a combined total of just $1.51.

It's likely the exchange was just reconfiguring its cold wallets, where it stores the majority of its customers's Bitcoin offline.

image: pixabay

Why a massive $9 billion of bitcoin moved in one hour

A total of 1.3 million bitcoin (BTC) worth almost $9 billion was moved on-chain in a single hour yesterday. Despite this, the price of bitcoin is currently holding steady at around $7,300, after briefly spiking to more than $7,500 yesterday. According to Rafael Schultze-Kraft, cofounder of on-chain market intelligence firm Glassnode, this is the highest hourly USD transaction volume in bitcoin's history. But who was moving so much bitcoin around? And why? Glassnode said that this recent spike wa...

NewsMarkets
2 min read
Daniel Phillips

This isn't the first time the exchange has made such large Bitcoin transactions. Back in December, $9 billion in Bitcoin was moved in one hour, mostly due to a series of transactions that Bittrex made.

In September, there was a huge consolidation of Bitcoin into one address. A collection of large-scale Bitcoin owners—known as whales—moved 94,504 Bitcoin, worth over $1 billion, to an unknown wallet. That's over 0.5% of all coins in circulation. This was the same day that futures exchange Bakkt launched its custody service—but it would not comment on the transaction.

Currently the price of Bitcoin has fallen back through the $10,000 mark, sitting at $9,955. But while the price may be down, at least the fees are too.

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