F2Pool Co-Founder's Whale Does the 'Withdraw to Aave' Thing, Now Holds $158M in ETH

A wallet linked to Chun Wang, the co-founder of major Bitcoin mining pool F2Pool, recently pulled 9,000 ETH off Binance. The transfer was worth approximately $17.86 million — a transaction that made on-chain researchers pay attention. Someone at F2Pool apparently decided their ETH was getting too comfortable sitting on the exchange, probably earning a measly 0.01% APY while weeping softly into the void.

Rather than letting those funds gather dust, the F2Pool-linked wallet deposited the entire 9,000 ETH sum into Aave, the leading decentralized lending protocol. The whale is putting that capital to work earning passive yield. Classic degen behavior — why let your ETH just sit there when it could be working overtime, generating yield while you sleep, dream of higher prices, and occasionally check the app at 3am in a panic?

This widely tracked wallet now commands a balance of 79,818 ETH, bringing its total Ethereum holdings to roughly $158.72 million. At this point, we're not even talking about a whale anymore — this is more like a sea creature that's taken up permanent residence in the ocean and is just casually flexing on everyone at the surface.

Other whales are making moves too. Another unidentified whale withdrew 9,976 ETH (about $19.8 million) from Binance over a tight two-hour window. The massive transaction was split across three separate wallets to obscure the footprint. Privacy is trendy, apparently. Three wallets walk into a CEX, and out comes 10K ETH spread across the blockchain like a confused game of hot potato.

Meanwhile, institutional player BlackRock deposited 68,568 ETH ($139.9 million) and 612 BTC ($41.4 million) to Coinbase Prime. The big boys are playing too — just with more paperwork and probably a compliance department breathing down their necks about every single on-chain move.

And early adopters are taking profits. An original Ethereum ICO participant sold 11,552 ETH for $23.42 million. This investor famously bought 38,800 ETH at just $0.31 during the ICO, turning a $12,000 investment into nearly $80 million today. The original diamond hands, folks — bought when nobody cared, held through the dark times, and is now living rent-free in every crypto trader's head as the ghost of "what could have been."