Which coins did whales like a16z, Alameda, Vitalik, etc. buy?

The domestic stock market has a "Dragon and Tiger List" that reveals the ranking of the trading volume of the sales departments of popular stocks. The three major commodity futures exchanges will announce the cumulative positions and daily trading volume information of various varieties based on futures companies after the market closes. It can be said that compared with cryptocurrency trading platforms, mature markets have a more sound information disclosure mechanism .

Data of Dalian Commodity Exchange Iron Ore 2101 Contract on December 4

At the same time, centralized trading platforms have been criticized by some users for their dark operations and "data plugging". In the world of DeFi, everything is on-chain. In other words, the on-chain world is completely transparent. As "Hunting: What the Whales Did When DeFi Tokens Collapsed" has shown, if the on-chain world is compared to the sea, the activities of "whales" with huge amounts of funds will definitely cause aftermath in the "sea of ​​chains". And many times, all the astute "whalers" need to do is to watch the tide by the sea and take a panoramic view of the on-chain information to assist their decision-making.

This article will focus on analyzing some known Ethereum addresses that have been/are currently used by some institutions and well-known "whales" , and introduce relevant tools to help everyone use their "wisdom eyes" to clarify the world below the sea level in the ocean of DeFi.

Note: The following content comes from Twitter user Nick Chong and community speculation and does not constitute investment advice.

Institutional address and holdings

a16z

Related address: 0x05e793ce0c6027323ac150f6d45c2344d28b6019

One of the wallets of top investment institution a16z, the wallet address has also been marked as a16z on Etherscan. Currently, there are 50,000 MakerDAO tokens MKR, worth about $28.5 million, 370,000 Synthetix tokens SNX, worth about $1.9 million, and 97,000 Augur tokens REPv2, worth about $1.6 million.

On-chain transfer

From the on-chain transfers, we can see that a16z has very few transactions, and the most recent token transfer can be traced back to 100 days ago. Rhythm found that this address of a16z is also the address with the least on-chain transactions in this article.

Polychain

Related address: 0xBcd5000F5c522856E710c5d274bb672B2f2EefBf

Polychain has been most praised for its continuous purchase of yearn.finance (YFI). This address received 329 YFI transferred from Binance on October 17, when the price was $14,000; the last part was 140 YFI transferred to the address on November 9, when the price was $15,000 (the transfer is not equal to the purchase price). The purchase activities of this address have been followed by a large number of Twitter users. At the same time, Polychain's address also holds 48,000 Ethereum, worth about $28 million.

Recently, Polychain transferred part of the 1,300 MakerDAO tokens MKR held by this address to the trading platform.

Jump Trading

Jump has been operating since 1999 and is a top global market-making and asset high-frequency trading firm. The company is also known for being highly confidential, with little information about its business on its website. The company is active in the crypto market, providing liquidity to trading platforms and providing liquidity to Robinhood's crypto division in 2018. Its sister company Jump Capital is an active investor in the crypto market and has previously supported companies such as BitGo, Bitnomial, Bitso and Curve, according to LUT.

Related address: 0xf584f8728b874a6a5c7a8d4d387c9aae9172d621

Jump’s Ethereum address currently holds about $40 million worth of Serum tokens, which may be related to its investment in Serum. At the same time, Rhythm found that Jump also holds 26,000 Ethereum, worth $15 million, and holds about $20 million worth of Keep Network and Compound tokens.

It can be seen that Jump's on-chain activities are relatively frequent. The most recent on-chain transfer was a transfer of $56,000 to Binance.

Well-known users

Vitalik Buterin

Related address: 0x1db3439a222c519ab44bb1144fc28167b4fa6ee6

This is Vitalik's address, officially marked as Vb2 by Etherscan, and is also the address where Vitalik sent Ethereum tokens to the Ethereum 2.0 staking contract. In addition to holding 1,000 Ethereum, this address also holds the prediction market Augur token REP and Maker token MKR. The above two Ethereum projects are important members of the Ethereum ecosystem that Vitalik appreciates and often talks about. It is worth noting that from the address, Rhythm saw that Vitalik also held a large number of Augur's US election prediction tokens nTrump. When the delivery conditions are triggered, such as Trump cannot be re-elected, the price of nTrump tokens will be delivered at $1, while the price of yTrump tokens will be $0.

Alameda Research (SBF)

Related address: 0x477573f212a7bdd5f7c12889bd1ad0aa44fb82aa

This address is one of the addresses of Alameda Research. It is also the address mentioned in the reference reading that once pledged a large amount of FTT to exchange for YFI. According to Etherscan, the address currently holds about 156 Ethereum and Serum tokens SRM worth $350,000. But this is far from the full picture of this address. In fact, this is a wallet address worth nearly $100 million, but due to the limitations of Etherscan (not showing the value of LP tokens and Staking tokens), only the actual tokens are displayed. Other assets of this address will be further analyzed and displayed later.

Huang Licheng

Related address: 0x020ca66c30bec2c4fe3861a94e4db4a498a35872

According to Twitter users, this address belongs to Huang Licheng, the founder of Mithril, Cream.Finance and SWAG.Finance. This address holds a large number of Cream tokens (currently worth about 10 million US dollars) and stakes them on the Cream.Finance platform. Similar to the above situation, the market value of this part of the tokens will not be displayed on Etherscan.

This address is also one of the earliest users to purchase KP3R

Just as ingredients without cooking skills are not enough to cook a good meal, it is far from enough to only observe the addresses. Manually refreshing the addresses for a long time is an extremely inefficient way. At this time, it is necessary to introduce on-chain analysis tools. The following will introduce some tools that simplify/quantify addresses and data.

Related Tools

DeBank

The decentralized finance portal DeBank not only provides data on the total locked value (TVL) of various projects, but also provides the important wallet tracking function. Users can access DeBank through the wallet address to view the account assets, or enter other addresses to track. DeBank provides batch registration of different addresses. In short, users can track DeFi assets of multiple accounts. Other products of the same type include Zapper and Zerion. The picture below shows the Alameda address, which only shows a total of more than 400,000 US dollars in assets on Etherscan. By using DeFi management software such as DeBank, you can see its "true face". This also applies to the address with a large number of Cream tokens mentioned above.

Telegram bot

Users familiar with Telegram can try using channels similar to UniWhales.io to observe large transactions on the Uniswap chain, and use TrackTX to follow the on-chain activities of specific addresses or contracts.

Summarize

In addition to observing addresses and their behaviors, users can also summarize the "values" of different wallets. The above addresses show the strong investment styles of different institutions/individuals, and some addresses are highly analyzable or practical. In the DeFi era, studying addresses or project contracts will lead to many interesting conclusions. For example, by studying the holding addresses and concentration of WBTC, users can have a deeper understanding of the current development of DeFi.

There are two ways to observe data. The first is to track familiar addresses to learn about new projects and new ideas; the second is to study the addresses of specific currencies to assist in your decision-making. This article is intended to provide a starting point for discussion. More meaningful tools and methods for observing on-chain data are waiting for users to study and explore.

Compared with the market overview attribute of Dune Analytics, this article intends to provide a more detailed way to observe the market. The cryptocurrency market is a highly reflexive capital market, and users need to make rational judgments on their own. At the same time, the addresses in this article are very likely to represent only part of the addresses of institutions, and users should not use them as investment guidance.

BlockBeats reminds investors to pay attention to risks and operate with caution. This article does not constitute any investment advice.

References:

Nick Chong Tweets

"Hunting: What the whales did when DeFi tokens plummeted"

《Do you really know how to use Dune Analytics? ｜Project Introduction》