Ethereum Surges to One-Month High as Whale Accumulates ETH and Borrows Millions

Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has experienced a surge in demand and price since the beginning of February. Today, it reached a one-month high of $2,687 in early trading.

According to Lookonchain, an Ethereum whale has been accumulating ETH since February, taking advantage of the rising price from its lows of $2,239.

The whale's strategy involves going long on ETH using revolving loans on the Spark platform. This platform allows borrowers to withdraw, refund, and redraw funds within a specific limit and period. Spark is a platform that provides revolving loans, where users can deposit ETH or other ERC-20 tokens as collateral and borrow stablecoins like USDC or DAI at a variable interest rate.

Since February 1, the aforementioned whale has withdrawn 39,900 ETH worth $99.5 million from exchanges such as Binance, Bybit, OKEx, and Bitfinex. The average price at which the ETH was withdrawn was $2,492. Additionally, the whale has borrowed 56.8 million DAI from Spark.

The whale's goal is to increase their ETH holdings and profits while paying minimal interest on the loans. This strategy may seem risky given the volatility of the crypto market, but the whale's bullish stance is evident.

The whale is essentially betting that the price of ETH will rise more than the interest rate of the loans and that the collateral value will not fall below the liquidation threshold. However, if the price of ETH significantly drops, the whale may lose their collateral and suffer a substantial loss.

On Monday, the Ethereum ecosystem and layer-2 tokens such as LDO, ARB, and MNT experienced a surge after Franklin Templeton filed for a spot Ethereum ETF. The growth in alternative cryptocurrencies, or "altcoins," seems to have accompanied Bitcoin's surge, which reached $50,000 for the first time since late 2021. At the time of writing, ETH was up 8% in the last 24 hours, reaching $2,678.