Ethereum ICO whale spends $23.7 million on ETH it sold at $2,010 in March

A wallet linked to Ethereum’s 2015 initial coin offering exchanged $23.7 million in stablecoins for 8,492.8 ETH on Sept. 21, acquiring the tokens at an average price of approximately $2,794 each.

Cryptopolitan calculates that this entry point is roughly 39% higher than the $2,010 price the whale secured when selling in March.

Four Cow Swap orders cleared in eight minutes on Sept. 21

The transaction was executed through Cow Swap, a decentralized exchange aggregator that combines pooled orders. Address 0xBE42…0c5F liquidated four different stablecoins simultaneously.

On-chain analyst ai_9684xtpa, who first identified the trade on X, calculated the total expenditure at $23.72 million alongside a cost basis of $2,793.59.

The four execution fills consisted of: 10,049,997.50 DAI traded for 3,591.36 ETH, 4,493,614.20 USDS for 1,611.18 ETH, 7,055,997.28 USDC for 2,527.90 ETH, and 2,125,834.46 USDT for 762.36 ETH.

CoW Protocol explorer order history indicates the stablecoins left the wallet between 15:29 and 15:37 UTC on Sept. 21.

During the same session, the wallet settled approximately 809 wrapped ether of debt on the DeFi lending platform Aave, retrieving about 8,876 ETH in collateral. Following the latest acquisition, its total holdings stand at approximately 16,773 ETH.

Further down in the same order history, a transaction dated March 27 shows the address disposing of 1,923.05 Aave-wrapped ether in exchange for 3,866,637.83 USDC. This computes to $2,010.68 per coin, with ETH closing that day at $1,992.

Having exited near $2,010 and re-entered around $2,794, the new position shows an unrealized loss of about $382,000, given ETH traded at $2,749 at 12:38 UTC on Sept. 22.

Shortly after the purchase, ETH reached a peak of $2,807, marking its highest price level since Jan. 30, 2026.

A $12,028 founding stake hit about $108.6 million at the Sept. 21 high

According to ai_9684xtpa, the address traces back to Ethereum’s initial offering, originating from a subscription of 38,800 ETH priced at roughly $0.31 per coin, which were delivered upon the network’s 2015 launch.

The initial investment totaled roughly $12,028. At the Sept. 21 peak of nearly $2,800, that identical holding would have reached a value of approximately $108.6 million.

In February, early-era whales transferred tens of thousands of ETH out of OKX and Binance into self-custody solutions while the asset traded near $2,037.

Additional figures indicated that major stakeholders reduced their reserves by up to 1.5% during the early months of 2026 as valuations dipped below $2,000.

In a separate activity, another entity distributed purchases across multiple fresh addresses, accumulating 21,520 ETH—valued at about $55.8 million—over a five-day span starting Sept. 18. This buyer paid between $2,450 and $2,762 for an average of $2,593, yielding an estimated paper gain of $3.25 million.

That particular group utilized proceeds from selling UBTC, a wrapped bitcoin variant from Hyperliquid, to finance the ETH acquisitions. While reminiscent of an earlier Hyperliquid whale who traded 1,107 BTC for 34,422 ETH, confirmation that both accounts belong to the same operator is lacking.

Tom Lee’s Bitmine acquired an additional 27,562 ETH over the prior week, bringing its total to nearly 4.9% of the circulating supply.

Spot ether ETFs attracted $270 million in inflows on Monday, propelled by BlackRock’s ETHA at $110.1 million and Fidelity’s FETH at $73 million.

The smartest crypto minds already read our newsletter. Want in? Join them.