>According to a very recent analysis by Ki Young Ju, a market analyst, a whale has bought $1.6 billion worth BTC via market orders in just five minutes.

This is interesting as it implies 1.6B of fiat moved hands (unless it came from other tokens which I doubt), very hard to pull that off while avoiding KYC.

I remark this as usually the 'whale' term implies some sort of anonymity as in "we only know a lot of tokens moved".

Whale just means rich person who can make a big splash in the market, not that they are anonymous and avoiding KYC.

Just because the general public doesn't know who it is, doesn't mean the exchanges used and regulatory agencies don't know who it is. KYC doesn't mean we the people get to know, just that government authorities get to know.

> This is interesting as it implies 1.6B of fiat moved hands (unless it came from other tokens which I doubt)

No fiat, just Tether.

It was most likely not one single actor, nor was it likely a bonafide purchase. This was meant to rip the market higher and liquidate shorts.

> This was meant to rip the market higher and liquidate shorts.

Seems to have worked.

Awesome, thanks.

>I remark this as usually the 'whale' term implies some sort of anonymity

Does it ? Whale is commonly used in finance-related and casino-related subjects, where anonymity is nowhere to be found; and even in crypto anonymity is nowhere to be found, as yourself remarked, KYC is always needed as soon as you want to move crypto in/out of cash. The only anonymous part is that the common public doesn't know who that is.

It also doesn't say if it was dollars or a dollar-substitute token.

Probably the Tether execs doing the old pump and dump to cash in before they face the subpoenas and the downward spiral of criminal reckoning... I doubt anything was 'bought,' probably more likely 'traded.'

For this to be the case, it requires that there exists $1.6 billion in demand for Tether, right?

Who are these people that are demanding and holding that much of something even the crypto community thinks is fishy and likely to collapse someday?

Tether in the past have created millions of tokens out of thin air, so could just be that again... Speak of the devil, look what's popped up on HN: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-10-07/crypto-my...

at this point, i dont know what buying means with all these other corrupt currencies. this could just be the proceeds from another successful pump and dump

No, these were market orders on an exchange.

What makes you think institutions do not execute market orders? They do it all the time especially in crypto. They do it to trigger buy orders.

They weren't saying it wasn't an institution making the market order. They were saying it was a public trade and not just a blockchain transaction.

Edit; the actual analysis is here https://cryptoquant.com/quicktake/615dab839a9d40253e0e36ee-S... but doesn't give much detail.

Institutions in the typical context of the word do not do this. They don’t engage in manipulation of markets.

Traders and exchanges do.