Ether punched through $2,700 for the first time since January 31, and the tape has a whale signature. Bitcoin.com News reports that two large buyers committed a combined roughly $106.4 million to ETH over five days—even as spot Ethereum ETFs were still bleeding in the prior week.
ETH traded near $2,738 in that report, up about 6% on the day and 11% over thirty days, with Bitcoin's parallel push toward $85,000 lifting the complex. The break reclaimed January's intraday high after ETH first cleared $2,600 during the September 11 CPI squeeze.
The Hyperliquid rotation that keeps growing
Onchain trackers flagged a Hyperliquid whale that sold 1,107 BTC (about $86.8 million) and bought 34,422 ETH (about $86.5 million), then staked the entire stack. That is an escalation from mid-month activity when related wallets—eleven newly created addresses likely under common control—had already sold 602 BTC for 18,780 ETH over three days. In the following 72 hours the same cluster added hundreds more BTC of selling and more than 15,000 ETH of buying.
Staking matters for market structure: coins parked with validators are not sitting on an exchange order book waiting for the next dump. It is also not the only BTC-to-ETH swap this month. Separate coverage noted another wallet selling hundreds of BTC for ETH hours before the September 15 CLARITY Act Senate vote—evidence that some large accounts have been rotating for weeks, not just chasing Monday's candle.
Wallet 0x4cee's calendar habit
The second buyer, labeled 0x4cee in reporting, has a pattern of moving size around the 21st of the month. July: $20 million USDC into Binance for about 10,501 ETH near $1,904. August: sold roughly 10,500 ETH near $2,252 for a multi-million-dollar profit. September 20–21: sent about $32.17 million USDC to Binance in three transfers (a $2 million test, then $18 million, then $12.17 million) and withdrew 7,567 ETH (~$19.9 million) back onchain, with more of the deposit possibly still exchange-side for additional buys.
Address poisoners noticed within minutes, flooding the wallet history with lookalike USDC/ETH spam transfers and copycat deposit addresses aimed at tricking a paste mistake. The real deposits still hit the correct Binance address—this time. The tactic has drained tens of millions from careless whales earlier in the year, including eight-figure single losses in January.
Whales leading while ETFs lag
Spot ether ETFs shed about $140 million in the week to September 18, per the same report. That split—whale accumulation versus fund outflows—means the $2,700 break is not yet a clean institutional stampede. Futures markets added another temporary bid: short liquidations across crypto accelerated as Bitcoin ripped, and ether shorts were part of that forced buying.
Sustaining the level likely needs genuine spot demand to replace leverage unwinds once the squeeze cools. Traders watching confirmation will look for ETF flows to flip positive and for $2,700 to hold as support rather than a wick. A failure back toward the mid-$2,600s would reframe Monday as a liquidation spike; a hold opens the path toward the mid-$2,700s and the psychologically loud $2,800 zone that chart watchers have marked since the CPI bounce.
What the rotation implies
Large BTC-to-ETH swaps during a Bitcoin breakout are a relative-value bet: either ethereum is cheap versus bitcoin into the next leg, or whales want yield via staking while still riding beta. Neither thesis requires retail FOMO—and the ETF outflows show retail-via-funds is not leading. For longer-horizon watchers, the staking of freshly bought ETH is the more interesting tell: someone sizeable is willing to lock coins rather than flip the bounce.
Source: Bitcoin.com News