The Defiant

$300M Whale Spotted in DeFi’s Turbulent Seas

A wallet holding over 1% of the $21B total value locked in DeFi has surfaced on crypto Twitter. The whale, whose ether address is 0xB1AdceddB2941033a090dD166a462fe1c2029484, has a net worth of ~$340M, with $482M in assets and $141M in debt, according to DeFi wallet tracker DeBank. Only $8.5M sits unused while 97% of the capital is…

By: Owen Fernau Loading...

$300M Whale Spotted in DeFi’s Turbulent Seas

A wallet holding over 1% of the $21B total value locked in DeFi has surfaced on crypto Twitter.

The whale, whose ether address is 0xB1AdceddB2941033a090dD166a462fe1c2029484, has a net worth of ~$340M, with $482M in assets and $141M in debt, according to DeFi wallet tracker DeBank.

Only $8.5M sits unused while 97% of the capital is being supplied to DeFi, ranging from well-known protocols like Compound and Uniswap, to lesser-known projects like YFLink and Dodo. The wallet is earning between $200k-$400k daily, just through yield farming.

the-defiant

“They hold a majority of their holdings in WBTC or ETH,” says The Defiant contributor and crypto analyst Nick Chong, adding, “they’re a big fan of Chainlink.”

Standout Decisions

Standout decisions include the supply of over $170 million to the Compound lending protocol, of which $112M is ETH, and $62M is in WBTC, a form of ported bitcoin which allows the original cryptocurrency to be used on ethereum. About $85M has been borrowed in stablecoins against that collateral.

the-defiant

The wallet also provides over $33M to BadgerDAO, the “community DAO (decentralized autonomous organization), focused on bringing Bitcoin to Defi” as per the project’s documentation.

Rounding out its positions with above $20M supplied are Alpha Homora, Harvest Finance, Uniswap, and Aave protocols. The wallet’s primary long position on Chainlink lies in the $50M supplied to Aave.

Identity Unknown

As blockchains are a pseudonymous technology, the wallet’s true owner, or owners, remains unknown. But the owner has now decided to engage the DeFi community in public, where the profile, which goes by 0x_B1, recently tweeted a series of predictions for 2021, including “Biden = good for crypto” and “Banksy and other mainstream artists enter the crypto NFT space. TRUE degeneracy ensues.”

In addition to joining Twitter, the wallet owner purchased the domain name 0xB1.eth via the ENS registrar controller contract on Jan. 5 2021. The registration is set to expire in two years.

The wallet’s Twitter account has become an overnight DeFi rockstar, garnering over 10,000 followers, in part fueled by a Jan. 2 mostly in response to a thread by Chong, on Jan. 2, where the analyst broke down the wallet’s activities.

Ulterior Motives

It’s unclear whether the wallet has actually made money. Twitter user 0xLeeDOT pointed out that according to Ethplorer, the wallet’s value has almost halved to $219M from $420M million in August.

the-defiant

But Zerion, which also provides visualization of wallet’s balances, shows an upward trend in the wallet’s balance since August 2020 to $231M currently.

It could be that 0x_B1, as the wallet identifies on Twitter, is seeking more than just material gain. Their predictions tweetstorm ended with the words “We the knights of 0x_b1 will continue to tirelessly work to accelerate the real world applicability of DeFi in ways we think we can.”

They may well be doing so by providing broad liquidity across the open finance space.

Chef Link

0x_B1’s first big infusion of capital came the day before Master Chef sold his $14 million Sushi stake, which has led some to speculate the owner may be linked to the SushiSwap co-founder, though the Sushi chef did end up returning the $14M . 0x_B1’s Twitter bio refers to themself as an “alpha chef,” which adds fuel to the whale seekers’ sleuthing.

Regardless , the wallet’s capital deployment choices demonstrate a zeal for open finance. DeFi’s participants certainly benefit from 0x_B1’s deep pockets providing equally deep liquidity to the system so perhaps the wallet’s identity is of secondary importance.

Subscribe to DeFi Daily Newsletter and Get Smarter on DeFi & Web3.

80k+ investors informed every day.