A Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia working paper has found that public whale alerts trigger a much faster trading response in Bitcoin than in Ethereum. According to the study, non-whale Bitcoin wallets became active and traded in the alerted whale's direction most strongly during the first 15 minutes. Buy participation rose by 14.81 percentage points for small wallets, 23.72 points for medium wallets and 3.50 points for large wallets after whale buys. After whale sells, sell participation increased by 12.95, 29.52 and 2.95 points, respectively. That same-direction activity then faded toward normal within about an hour.
Ethereum did not show the same broad response. Post-alert participation remained comparatively stable across wallet groups, with the clearest immediate same-direction result only among the largest non-whale cohort after whale sells. The authors said the gap reflects a market-structure difference: Ethereum activity often runs through exchanges, smart contracts and layer-2 venues, where many user transactions may be aggregated into larger balance transfers. The contrast persisted even after Ethereum's September 2022 shift to proof of stake.
The researchers matched public Whale Alert notification times with on-chain Bitcoin, Ethereum and Wrapped Bitcoin transfers through the end of 2025. They defined a whale wallet as one that had made at least one transfer worth more than $50 million, excluding wallets associated with exchanges or smart contracts. After filtering, the sample included 6,645 BTC and 5,075 ETH whale transactions. Whale alerts were associated with a temporary rise in realized Bitcoin volatility at short horizons, but by 24 hours the effect on BTC volatility had reversed. Ethereum realized volatility was lower after alerts, while the response to WBTC alerts was statistically indistinguishable from zero.
The authors caution that the evidence remains observational: wallet-size groups are transaction-based proxies, one owner may control multiple addresses, and exchange activity was excluded. The event study establishes patterns in wallet activity and volatility around public alerts, not that alerts caused every observed response.
Separately, fresh whale movements were reported across several assets. A Fireblocks-linked custody wallet sent $19.4 million worth of Trump-backed USD1 stablecoin to Binance, bringing the same wallet's 13-day total to approximately $149.8 million. A long-dormant whale that had been inactive for 119 days withdrew 116,490 HYPE, worth about $9.6 million, from OKX. On the Chainlink side, Grayscale's GLNK ETF acquired an additional 203,810 LINK worth roughly $2.38 million via Coinbase Prime, with total 18-day accumulation reaching 1.05 million LINK. Chainlink also added 91,100 LINK to its strategic reserve, bringing its 30-day reserve accumulation to 511,000 LINK and total strategic reserve to about 5.86 million LINK, valued near $67.24 million.
