The Bitcoin community spread a news story that a mysterious $3 billion BTC wallet, labeled as the cryptocurrency’s third-largest hodler, belongs to Gemini instead of BlackRock.
So BlackRock still does not own any Bitcoin?
Let’s see all the details together.
Summary
Bitcoin News: $3 billion crypto-wallet is not BlackRock’s, but Gemini’s
Yesterday’s Bitcoin news covered a mysterious crypto-wallet worth more than $3 billion that possibly could have belonged to the US investment company BlackRock.Â
The address in question reportedly began accumulating Bitcoin for the first time on 8 March 2023, becoming the cryptocurrency’s 3rd largest hodler in just a few months, coming to own a whopping 118,300 BTC equivalent to $3.09 billion.
The rumors of alleged connection with the world’s largest hedge fund began to surface in the late evening of Monday, 21 August after several Twitter profiles had begun to suspect Larry Fink’s hand.
The strangest thing about this affair is indeed the timing with which the owner of the address allegedly began to heavily accumulate its holdings, since the largest transaction that took place was on 16 May, just a month before BlackRock’s application for a Bitcoin spot ETF to the SEC.
As many as 3,400 BTC were in fact bought on that date, suggesting that the giant hedge fund had loaded up its positions before the market pumped due to the news regarding its entry into the industry.
As we are well aware, since mid-June the crypto market has charged one of the most important rallies of all 2023, with the premier cryptocurrency rising 15.65% during the week that the first application for a spot ETF in the United States was announced.
Most likely Larry Fink and his partners bought Bitcoin before the market exploded to the upside, as advanced smart money in the financial world usually does.
However, in reality, it seems that BlackRock had nothing to do with the $3 billion wallet and that the real holders are the famous Winklevoss twins with their cryptocurrency exchange Gemini.
Regardless, BlackRock may still have bought the cryptocurrency secretly by diligently hiding its cryptographic footprints so as not to arouse suspicion and being able to move freely.
Latest news says the 118,300 Bitcoin wallet belongs to Gemini and not Blackrock
The latest news from the crypto world indicates that the 118,300 Bitcoin wallet belongs to cryptocurrency exchange Gemini and not to hedge fund BlackRock.
It was the “Wu Blockchain” Twitter profile that first mentioned the connection with the Winklevoss twins, which pointed out that some transfers from the US exchange platform dated 3 months ago had as their recipient the very address that now shares a $3 billion balance sheet.
It is often the case that for reasons of security or “logistical convenience” cryptocurrency exchanges periodically send their funds to new addresses, causing the countervalue of the latter to grow quickly.
The Bitcoin that the famous address has “accumulated” as of March 2023 are simply the assets of the exchange’s users, among which you might be one if you are a Gemini customer.
The image below shows the performance of a cold wallet of the Winklevosses that from May 2023 onwards has completely emptied all its reserves reaching zero in the last days of June.
The transfers are all directed to the address “bc1ql4,” incorrectly attributed to the giant BlackRock.
As if that were not enough to create confusion among the community in this story, we can see how on-chain tracking firm Nansen labeled the $3 billion Bitcoin wallet under Robinhood’s ownership.
According to Nansen, the massive cryptocurrency holding would be under the domain of the US broker as “Jump Trading Custody“
In reality, the transactions on the blockchain clearly show how Gemini is the real owner of the mysterious wallet.
We hope that Tyler or Cameron Winklevoss will clarify once and for all who is the third largest Bitcoin holder in the world.
BTC balance sheet of exchange wallets
After debunking the news of BlackRock’s alleged hand in the $3 billion wallet and clarifying Gemini’s true ownership, we can now devote a brief discussion to the topic of Bitcoin balance sheets of cryptocurrency exchanges.
Since 2014, major crypto exchange platforms have been accumulating positions in Bitcoin, becoming one of the largest aggregate entities in terms of cryptocurrency supply.
Indeed, in March 2020, a period related to the dump of the markets at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, exchanges such as Binance, Bitfinex, Bithumb, Bitmex, Coinbase, Gemini, Deribit, Kraken, and Kucoin reached the incredible aggregate sum of 3.2 million Bitcoin equivalent to 15.23% of the max supply of the digital gold.
From that point on (classified as ATH of the exchanges’ balance sheet) the numbers began to decline periodically to the current 2.28 million BTC.
As the 2020-2021 bull market bore fruit by raising crypto asset prices, exchanges decreased their share from HODLers, likely sold to the market for FIAT or stablecoins.
Truth be told, even after the bullish market ended, this metric has continued to see the holdings of exchanges shrink in a trend that still has not stopped and appears to want to continue.
From November 2021 onward, the ATH month for Bitcoin, about 500,000 coins have evaporated from exchange wallets.
Most likely this wealth has ended up in the hands of individual holders who jealously guard their coins on personal wallets without risking handing over their private keys to third-party entities.
