- ARB’s whale trading increased significantly last week.
- The market was reacting to the upcoming Dencun upgrade and the unlocking of ARB’s maximum tokens.
Popular layer 2 (L2) token Arbitrum (ARB) has moved to a large number of cryptocurrency exchanges in the past 24 hours, sparking interest and speculation in the wider market.
What are the whales doing?
According to Spot On Chain, an on-chain data tracker, during the afternoon hours UTC on March 9, two whale investors deposited a total of 2.77 million ARB into Binance (BNB).
At the time of reporting, the amount transferred amounted to $4.87 million.
AMBCrypto dug deeper and discovered that one of the whales had transferred 916,787 tokens to Binance at the usual rate.
The whale withdrew this amount 2.5 months ago and stands to make a profit of $608,000 if it decides to cash it out. Similarly, another whale sent 1.85 million ARBs to Binance, recording an unrealized profit of $2.67 million.
Together, the two companies would make a profit of $3.3 million if they decide to sell their holdings at the current price.
AMBCrypto, using Santiment data, revealed that these developments were part of a broader increase in high-value trading in ARB over the week.
Source: Santiment
The surge in whale trade precedes two important events in the Arbitrum ecosystem.
Dencun strengthening ARB?
The first was the much-anticipated Dencun upgrade scheduled for March 13th. It was expected that technological improvements would significantly reduce transaction fees for layer 2 projects.
ARB does not derive any value from Arbitrum’s on-chain activities. In other words, you can only benefit from the positive emotions surrounding your L2, especially Arbitrum.
ARBs to flood the market
Second, ARB was scheduled to witness the largest ever lifting of lockdowns on March 16. A whopping 1.1 billion tokens, representing 76% of the circulating supply, were scheduled to be distributed to teams and investors.
Token analytics firm Token Unlocks said that if the price remains unchanged, ARB’s market capitalization will surge from its current $2.65 billion to more than $5 billion after unlocking.
Realistic or not, ARB’s market cap in BTC terms is:
Additionally, ARB could enter the top 25 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization list, up from its current 50th position.
On the other hand, the introduction of such a large supply into circulation could put inflationary pressures on ARBs, potentially leading to significant losses.