A recently identified whale has spent $2.72 million in $WETH to acquire $PEPE. The funds appear to be from an entity associated with TornadoCash.
In an eye-catching development in the world of cryptocurrency, a rapidly forming whale has laid claim to a stunning sum—1,413.4 $WETH, pegged at approximately $2.72 million. They have spent this not-so-small chunk of change in the last eight hours to acquire a seriously large number of $PEPE tokens—437.7 billion, to be exact. What makes this purchase even more interesting is the ongoing regulatory drama surrounding TornadoCash, the privacy service from which these wallets seemingly got their $ETH.
Whale’s $PEPE Purchase: A Bold Move During Price Rebound
The whale, tagged with the wallet address 0x7A7D, has become the new holder of 437.7 billion $PEPE tokens. This purchase went down not long after $PEPE’s price made a sharp rebound, with observers now scrutinizing the whale’s likely intention behind buying up the memes coin at this time. Was it an opportunistic bet timed to coincide with the recent token recovery? Or, to put it another way, are whales now desperate to accumulate as many $PEPE tokens as possible?
Purchasing something as large as a $1 billion asset often indicates a high level of confidence in that asset. But it is also something that naturally draws attention to the buyer and could make other investors in the market a bit uneasy. If a whale with that much cash on hand chooses to diversify into $PEPE, they are potentially jacking up the price of $PEPE while also making it less stable.
But the whale’s $ETH origin is where it truly gets interesting and controversial. Blockchain data shows that all of the $ETH used in the transaction came from Tornado Cash, a privacy tool designed to make it nearly impossible to trace the kind of transactions that Tornado Cash users have done. It’s been a bad couple of years for Tornado Cash. After the U.S. government sanctioned the platform, claiming it was being used for money laundering and other illegal activities, people who run and work for Tornado Cash have been up for a prosecution.
TornadoCash and the Untraceable Funds
Asking whodunit and where the money came from is only natural. The whale buyer of Pepe tokens funded through TornadoCash is a riddle wrapped in an enigma. Three wallets—0x7A7D, 0x9212, and 0x7779—put their money where the ??? is. They bought a huge amount of Pepe, almost 8 million worth of it, for over 2.5 billion of our dollars.
Wallet 0x7A7D, responsible for the majority of the $PEPE purchase, spent 1,413.4 $ETH ($2.72 million) to acquire the 437.7 billion tokens. Meanwhile, 0x9212 spent $1 million (roughly 530 $ETH) to acquire 158.58 billion $PEPE tokens. And 0x7779 spent 299 $ETH (approximately $574,000) for 93.51 billion $PEPE. Together, these three transactions represent a significant influx of funds into the $PEPE market, raising concerns among observers about the motivations behind these buys.
TornadoCash has a reputation as a privacy tool that allows users to anonymize their transactions. This makes it a favorite among those who want to obscure the origins of their funds.
TornadoCash is not inherently illegal, but its usage has come under fire because of associations with criminal activities like money laundering. In 2022, the platform was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for allegedly being used to launder billions of dollars. Much of that activity was said to be related to cybercriminals in North Korea.
Nevertheless, TornadoCash persists in functioning within a number of jurisdictions, and its employment by substantial crypto investors who prefer to mask the provenance of their funds is not particularly rare. Yet when we dig deeper, we find that TornadoCash contains an additional layer of complication, directing our gaze to the crystal ball and the potentially perilous risks evident in those trades for the crypto ecosystem writ large.
What This Means for $PEPE and the Crypto Market
Whale’s Purchase of Pepe Coin Raises Questions About Market Manipulation.
The timing of the whale’s purchase is noteworthy in the context of Pepe Coin’s recent price rebound. As a meme-based token, $PEPE’s price is notoriously volatile, often driven by market sentiment, social media trends, and speculative trading. The purchase of such a massive amount of tokens may indicate that the whale believes in the continued upside potential of $PEPE.
Moreover, the nature of these large transactions in relation to TornadoCash points to potential fresh obstacles for the crypto market when it comes to transparency and regulation. Because the tools that some in the crypto space are using to “ensure privacy” are now under such scrutiny, it’s reasonable to ask whether the crypto tools themselves are adding to the opacity problem. And if they are, regulators might be forced to act.
At this moment, the inquiry is whether this whale’s large-scale buy of $PEPE will have a permanent effect on the price of the token or if it’s just another yolo buy in the meme coin market.
You have to hand it to the whale, though. He’s gone for broke on a project many in the crypto community deride as inherently worthless, and he’s done so less than a week after an even bigger mystery figure dropped $25 million into another meme coin, $PUMP.
What’s next? A $TOAST buy-in?
The influence of whales and the use of privacy-enhancing technologies are likely to remain the focal points for both regulators and investors as the crypto market continues to evolve. The whale’s gamble on $PEPE may or may not pay off, but transferring millions in $ETH via TornadoCash makes this story a must-watch.
Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any Metaverse crypto coins.