Binance processed a three-year record of ether withdrawal transactions in a single day, even as its net supply of ETH kept rising. On the same day, bitcoin miner Riot Platforms staged another 500 BTC for a possible sale, moving the coins into NYDIG custody.
Binance cleared more than 166,000 ether withdrawal transactions in a single day, the highest count in over three years, according to CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost on July 3. The surge landed with ether trading near $1,725, as the token tries to steady itself after a rough second quarter.
What the withdrawals may signal
Darkfost read the spike two ways: holders could be moving coins into self-custody to accumulate, or funds could be rotating into decentralized finance yield strategies. A record count built from many smaller withdrawals would point to retail participants pulling coins off the exchange, a pattern that historically reads as a bullish supply signal.
The picture is not one-sided, though. Despite the record transaction count, Binance's exchange netflow stayed positive at 12,938 ETH, meaning more ether flowed onto the platform than left it. Fellow CryptoQuant analyst PelinayPA offered a more cautious take, noting that positive netflow points to selling risk because coins on an exchange are easier to sell.
Institutional demand offers some counterweight. U.S. spot ether ETFs returned to net inflows of $29.08 million yesterday. Within that total, BlackRock's ETHA accounted for $29.74 million. Earlier this year, an a16z-linked wallet pulled 25,560 ETH worth $42.6 million off Binance.
Riot moves toward the exit again
While ether holders shuffled coins, the bitcoin side produced its own signal. Riot Platforms Inc. (Nasdaq: RIOT), the second-largest bitcoin miner, transferred 500 BTC worth about $30.72 million to NYDIG custody. Such deposits have repeatedly preceded Riot's onchain sales this year, including a similar 500 BTC move in April when the coins were worth about $39 million.
Riot has been one of the year's most consistent miner-sellers, having sold 3,778 BTC in the first quarter, more than double the 1,473 BTC it produced. Those sales generated $289.5 million in net proceeds at an average price of $76,626 per coin, cash earmarked largely for data center expansion.
The stack is thinning as a result, with Riot's holdings falling to 15,680 BTC at the end of Q1, down 18% from 19,223 a year earlier. Today's staging happened with bitcoin near $61,000, roughly $15,600 below Riot's Q1 average selling price, so any sale now would lock in far weaker economics than the miner captured earlier in the year.
Source: Bitcoin.com News
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