Will the awakening of the ancient giant whale cause the market to crash?

On Friday, eight ancient addresses that had been silent for 14 years and held a total of 80,000 bitcoins suddenly activated, triggering a panic drop in the market. According to the analysis of Conor Grogan, director of Coinbase, these addresses may belong to an independent miner in 2011, who had received a total of 180 blocks of mining rewards that year and once held 200,000 bitcoins. He is the fifth largest whale in the history of Bitcoin.

What makes the market most uneasy is that its holding cost is only $1.76 per coin. Based on the current price of $108,000, the unrealized profit is as high as 61,000 times. Once sold, it will inevitably have a huge impact on the market. Considering that the German government's sale of 49,858 bitcoins in 2024 triggered months of market volatility (the maximum drop was 32%), if this whale chooses to cash out, the potential selling pressure of its 80,000 bitcoins may cause a more violent market tsunami.

A data study by Glassnode in 2020 showed that there is only a 0.5% probability that Bitcoin that has not been moved for ten years will re-enter the market circulation, which leads to the fact that addresses that hold coins for more than ten years (without any transfer records) are usually regarded as permanently lost. So why did the "sleeping" Bitcoin suddenly wake up? There are currently three versions widely circulated in the market:

1. A Chinese national named Deng controls 80,000 Bitcoins. He was previously sentenced to 16.5 years in prison for illegal fundraising and mining. He lost the right to dispose of assets during his sentence and was released early through special channels this year.

2. The ancient miner accidentally retrieved the hard drive where the private key was stored.

3. The super main force that promoted the rise of Bitcoin in this round is acting in concert with a giant whale. It has hoarded a large number of low-priced chips before pulling the market. The activation of Bitcoin this time is to test the market reaction, reduce the market's sensitivity to large-scale abnormal movements, and prepare for the distribution of chips in the later period.

From the current situation, version 3 is the most likely, and there are two main reasons: First, after the giant whale "accidentally" obtained 80,000 bitcoins, it only transferred them to a new address and did not operate again. This operation mode is in line with the conventional security management behavior of large bitcoin holders; second, after the news leaked, the price of Bitcoin in the secondary market only fell by 1.09%, and there was no sign of any rush by smart funds. These two points show that the intention of the giant whale to sell in the short term is not obvious, and the super main force did not regard the sudden activation of the ancient address as an uncontrollable factor.

On July 4, US President Trump officially signed the "Big, Beautiful Act" that he strongly promoted, marking the implementation of the large-scale tax cuts and fiscal spending plan. The passage of the bill means that the Trump administration has completely abandoned the goal of fiscal austerity and instead restarted and expanded the fiscal expansion policy during its first term. It is worth noting that compared with the $2.43 trillion deficit increase brought about by the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" during Trump's first term, this "Big, Beautiful Act" is expected to increase the federal fiscal deficit by up to $5 trillion, and the scale of expansion has been significantly enlarged.

Although the "Big Beautiful" bill may push the US debt to the brink in the long run, in the short term, the "Big Beautiful" bill will make the personal income tax and estate tax exemptions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent, increase the standard deduction for single taxpayers by $1,000 and married couples by $2,000 (until 2028), and exempt taxes on tips, overtime pay and some car loan interest. These measures can increase residents' income, stimulate consumption and boost the stock market in the short term, and the effect is comparable to direct cash distribution.

In addition to fiscal expansion, the adjustment of the supplementary leverage ratio (SLR) of the banking system may become another potential major positive. On June 25, 2025, the Federal Reserve issued a draft for comments on the proposed revised SLR rules, considering lowering the requirements for large banks (eSLR) from 5% to 3.5%, and may exclude low-risk assets such as U.S. Treasury bonds and central bank deposits from the scope of leverage ratio calculation.

According to the forecast of Treasury Secretary Bessant, the adjustment of SLR will be completed in the summer (June-August), which is expected to release about $2 trillion of balance sheet space for large U.S. banks and lower the long-term yield of U.S. Treasuries by 30-50 basis points.

The current macroeconomic policy mix in the United States is very clear: the additional debt of the "Big and Beautiful Act" will be jointly undertaken by the banking system (through SLR adjustment) and the "GENIUS Stablecoin Act" (mainly digesting short-term debt), and the Fed's interest rate cut will provide basic liquidity support for this.

This policy closed loop runs smoothly in the short term and is expected to continue to support the strength of risk assets such as US stocks and Bitcoin.