Onchain analyst Ai Yi has linked a second dormant ether wallet to an early buyer who paid about $18 per coin, the buyer's suspected exchange sales since August 2025 to roughly 6,000 ETH — coins worth approximately $15.85 million at the time they hit exchanges.

The more recent wallet shifted 3,000 ETH, valued at about $7.23 million, to a Kraken deposit address on Oct. 22.

Combined profit put above $15.74 million

In a Chinese-language post on X on October 23, Ai Yi flagged address 0xa4c…F02D0, pointing out that the buyer was not done selling.

The analyst said the address could be tied to the same whale as a previously tracked wallet because the buy timing, funding source, and deposit method all matched. Since a blockchain does not attach identities to addresses, analysts attribute multiple wallets to one holder through this kind of behavioral matching rather than direct proof.

If the link holds, all 6,000 ETH were deposited at an average price of $2,642.42, implying a combined return of more than 139x and a total profit above $15.74 million, according to Ai Yi.

The earlier tracked wallet moved 3,000 ETH out of Gemini nine years ago, when it was worth roughly $56,400. It sat inactive until August 2025, then began feeding coins to exchanges in batches.

By September 29, trackers had it selling 2,000 ETH at an average price of $3,096, or $6.19 million in total. The last 1,000 ETH left on Oct. 20, and Ai Yi put that wallet's average deposit price at $2,874.17 — a 151.7x return.

In a post on Oct. 21, Ai Yi said the earlier wallet was probably empty, and that if all of its coins had been sold, the profit would amount to about $8.57 million.

A $7.23 million batch lands at Kraken after eight idle years

Onchain data shows the 3,000 ETH moved from a Gemini hot wallet roughly nine years ago, when it was worth about $56,480, or $18.83 per coin. The funds passed through two intermediary wallets before arriving at 0xa4c… in August 2018, where they then sat for eight years.

All 3,000 ETH were transferred to Kraken in a single transaction at 14:49 UTC on October 22. With ether near $2,410 at the time, trackers priced the batch at $7.23 million — a 128x return.

They logged it as a sale, though so far the chain only shows a Kraken deposit. Exchanges execute trades on internal order books that the blockchain never records, so deposit transfers are the signal trackers use to infer selling, and further movements from addresses tied to the buyer would show whether the pattern continues.

Other early holders have also moved coins this month. One, who bought in at $14, deposited 6,369 ETH — about $16 million — to Kraken, while a 2015 ICO participant who purchased 170,000 ETH at $0.31 sent 13,330 ETH to Coinbase.

Ether trades near $2,400 after running from below $2,000 to $2,800 and stalling. Outflows persist from spot ether ETFs, and Tom Lee's Bitmine, the largest corporate buyer of ether, has said it will stop buying ETH once it holds 5% of supply. In that backdrop, deposits from long-dormant early wallets feed into the same supply-side picture analysts track alongside staking balances and exchange reserves.

Near-record levels of 44.1 million ETH are now staked. In February, Cryptopolitan reported that wallets holding 1,000 ETH or more shrank their holdings by as much as 1.5% in early 2026 as ETH fell below $2,000. Two other whales pulled a combined 29,079 ETH, worth about $60 million, off OKX and Binance in early February, Cryptopolitan reported.