The largest whale on the network of the meme-inspired cryptocurrency Dogecoin ($DOGE) recently transferred over $280 million in the cryptocurrency to a new address, which has since become the network’s fifth largest.
Dogecoin’s largest address, which once held 28% of the meme-inspired cryptocurrency’s circulating supply, has been identified as belonging to the commission-free trading platform Robinhood by explorers (NASDAQ: HOOD).
Through an investigation conducted after Robinhood demonstrated its external wallet feature by sending a specific amount of DOGE, the cryptocurrency community identified the address as belonging to Robinhood. Robinhood’s Chief Operating Officer Christine Brown revealed on Twitter at the time that the company is working on transferring funds into external wallets and shared a screenshot of a 420.71 DOGE transaction minus a 0.02 DOGE fee.
Twitter account dedicated to DOGE Mishaboar then used that transaction to identify the wallets sending and receiving DOGE, both of which belonged to Robinhood. Looking at the sender’s address history, Mishaboar discovered a wallet address that appeared to belong to Rohinhood and received a large amount of money from the mysterious whale account.
If the whale is indeed Robinhood, the address is simply their cold storage wallet, which holds user funds. As Mishaboar put it, this means that a large portion of DOGE’s supply is held by thousands of retail investors who bet on the cryptocurrency, rather than by a single whale who can crash the market.
Others, on the other hand, believe the wallets belong to Tesla, Twitter, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Musk has stated that DOGE is his favourite cryptocurrency and has promoted it on social media as a payment option for Tesla merchandise.
Service for on-chain analysis Lookonchain has shared data indicating that Musk is behind the whale address, as the whale added large amounts of tokens at times that corresponded with Elon Musk’s cryptocurrency tweets.
It’s worth noting that these inflows could also be related to $DOGE holders moving their funds to Robinhood to trade the cryptocurrency based on Musk’s words, as he has been known to move the price of the cryptocurrency.
According to reports, during the cryptocurrency’s massive 10,000% price rally, search interest for the meme-inspired cryptocurrency skyrocketed, rising from an average of 135,000 monthly searches in April 2020 to 16.5 million in April 2021.
DOGE’s popularity has since waned as the cryptocurrency market as a whole has declined. Nonetheless, the cryptocurrency’s market cap recently surpassed that of Coinbase, a Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency exchange.
