Last year and during the first half of 2022, speculators assumed the third-largest bitcoin address was a ‘mysterious whale,’ even though the wallet had shown strong characteristics of being a cryptocurrency exchange. The address known as “1P5ZED” has since been replaced by another address, after the wallet started to transfer its entire bitcoin balance in mid-July 2022. The bitcoin address “1LQoW” is now the third-largest wallet today, and it’s very likely that the owner of the 1LQoW wallet is the same entity that managed the 1P5ZED wallet.
The Third Largest Bitcoin Wallet Changed to a New Address, a Wallet That’s Likely Controlled by the Same Owner
After bitcoin’s price soared to new heights in November 2021, there was a significant amount of speculation concerning the third-largest bitcoin wallet known as “1P5ZED.” Rumors about the wallet plagued social media and some people erroneously attributed the wallet to Microstrategy’s stash of BTC.
Then after the rumors were debunked, blockchain observers noticed that 1P5ZED moved all of its bitcoins in mid-July. Blockchain records show that by the end of June 2022, the 1P5ZED address was down to 0.01257 BTC. In 2021, when Bitcoin.com News reported on 1P5ZED, a source with “access to blockchain analytics tools (Chainalysis and Ciphertrace) as part of their job function” told our newsdesk:
There is an almost 100% chance that both addresses in your article, both 1P5ZED and 1FzWLk, belong to Gemini.
The 1P5ZED wallet also had shown signs of exchange spending patterns like cluster spending. Furthermore, the block explorer oxt.me highlights two annotations, which assume that the “1P5ZED” bitcoin address may have been tied to the exchange Bittrex.
However, following the mid-July and end-of-June removal of more than 132,000 BTC, data still indicates that the wallet is still likely associated with the crypto exchange Gemini. Even if analysts cannot identify the exact owner of 1P5ZED, onchain data, clustering, and heuristics show that 1P5ZED simply changed hands (addresses), but the owner remains the same.
Despite Speculation, Bitcoin’s Third Largest Wallet Is Not a ‘Mystery Whale’ or ‘New Market Player’ — Onchain Data Points to an American-Based Crypto Exchange
The third largest bitcoin wallet today, “
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Bitcoin News…
