On-chain reveals $650 million whale migration; Ethereum Base dual-chain capital flows decrypted

On-chain monitoring captured a series of shocking market transactions this morning, among which the most notable was a transfer of 5,278 WBTC that occurred on the Ethereum network at 06:37 UTC, valued at approximately $461 million based on the price at that time. The transaction hash 0x49405c928c84f39c0c8c3bf1f6539eda3711d8953766adff7fc335ed1dbc3e64 shows funds flowing bidirectionally between addresses 0x00eb00c6f847740000884d00e03f00c761998feb and 0xbbbbbbbbbb9cc5e90e3b3af64bdaf62c37eeffcb.

Even more intriguing is that the same transaction also included a transfer of approximately $116 million in USDC. This combination of BTC and stablecoin strongly suggests large-scale arbitrage activities or liquidity adjustments by market makers. The address starting with 0xbbbb has been verified to be related to DEX aggregators like 1inch, indicating that this massive exchange could have been executed via smart routing.

Following closely, the Ethereum network recorded two additional transfers of approximately $109 million in USDC at 06:28 and 06:48 UTC, also involving the 0xbbbb address. Three consecutive transactions exceeding $100 million within 20 minutes resulted in a total flow of over $218 million USDC, demonstrating institutional-level precision in operations.

The Base chain also participated in this capital feast, recording a transfer of 23,375 WETH valued at approximately $69 million at 06:20 UTC. The transaction hash 0xe1de0d630402b74dca988bdd848e9e425046a776024c59287c190d885238fbae also shows a connection with the 0xbbbb address. This is a rare instance of a large ETH movement on a Layer 2 network.

By analyzing these events in sequence, over $650 million in crypto assets were transferred in less than a 30-minute window between the Ethereum mainnet and the Base chain. This concentrated and coordinated flow of funds is far from retail behavior; it resembles institutions executing pre-set trading strategies or hedging plans.

Possible explanations include large hedge funds reallocating positions between different chains and assets, market makers preparing liquidity for upcoming volatility events, or a DeFi protocol performing a large-scale TVL migration. It is worth noting that these transfers all employed bidirectional or circular structures, indicating that they are not simple buy-sell transactions, but rather more complex financial engineering operations.