Eight years ago today on October 6, 2014, while the price of bitcoin was coasting along at $330 per unit, an anonymous Bitstamp trader placed an order to sell 30,000 bitcoins. Moreover, the trader, now infamously known as the “Bear Whale,” sold the coins at $300 per unit, which put extreme pressure on the nascent bitcoin market that saw roughly $29 million a day in global trade volume.
A Look at the October 2014 Bitcoin ‘Bear Whale Incident’
While bitcoin (BTC) is trading for just below the $20K region, approximately eight years ago today, bitcoin traders faced off with the notorious “Bear Whale.” It was October 6, 2014, when the anonymous trader decided to sell 30,000 BTC in a single trade for $300 per coin.
At the time, the trader was looking to obtain $9 million from the sale and today, those bitcoins are worth roughly $603 million. When the event took place, the crypto community went wild and it even caught the attention of mainstream media outlets. The price of bitcoin just before Bear Whale’s infamous dump was around $330 and the trader’s $300 monstrous sell wall was eaten up by market traders that day.
Five years ago, Bear Whale allegedly posted to Reddit claiming it was his address that sold the coins, and he further said he acquired the bitcoins at $8 per unit. He also noted that he hastily put up the 30,000 BTC trade that day because he wanted to get away from his desktop.
“I could have gotten a better price if I spent more time working the order I guess,” Bear Whale said to the r/bitcoin Reddit community at the time. “I put up the wall because I didn’t want to just sit in front of the computer all day,” Bear Whale added.
Almost immediately after the anonymous Bitstamp trader made the sale, the crypto community named the seller Bear Whale, and they created memes around the notorious bitcoin seller. The name Bear Whale paid homage to the infamous London Whale, a JPMorgan Chase trader that lost $6.2 billion from erroneous trades. Bitcoiners mythologized the incident by saying that the community “slayed” the formidable beast on October 6, 2014.
“I feel like singing that whale meat song,” one bitcoiner said after the sell wall was defeated. “haha, so the whale lost almost a million bucks by selling it all at 300 instead of piecing it out and selling around 325,” another person from r/bitcoin wrote.
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