Bitfinex: 16% BTC and 46% ETH withdrawn and What the discrepancies in numbers might mean
Numbers and assumptions of there meaning could be wildly off, feel free to correct any errors
I have been monitoring these accounts
https://etherscan.io/address/0xcafb10ee663f465f9d10588ac44ed20ed608c11e
https://blockchain.info/address/35emx395afKAKAr72VoePVbu3FJvxLPVny
For the BTC one, Bitfinex seems to of consolidated all btc into this one account, getting to 92,000 BTC. And for the ETH one it had had 1,000,000 ETH since the time of the attack, didn't go up or down more than 1%.
Current values are
BTC: 77,000 16.3% withdrawn
BTC chart thanks to @kingkrung
ETH: 545,00 45.5% withdrawn
Main reason for this post is to make a few guesses at the reasons for this discrepancy between ETH and BTC's withdraw rate. I will give 3 possible reasons, all of which may be wrong, so help me out with corrections and other guesses.
Possible reason 1
Bitfinex is not processing all BTC withdrawals, due to not having enough BTC to honor them. Nightmare scenario, but while worried about this, I am not panicked yet.
Possible reason 2
I believe from my tracking of their ETH wallet that bitfinex has not sold any ETH yet, despite cutting users balances by 36%. So they are in possession of 360,000 ETH to do with as they please. Add to this that there has been large sell walls on ETH/USD and ETH/BTC on Bitfinex. I believe bitfinex may be selling off these coins at the moment and that would also explain why ETH did not have a Bitfinex premium while BTC did.
Is there anything wrong with this? I am not sure. I believe this is the most likely case.
Possible reason 3
Much less nefarious than the others, ETH transfers faster due to quicker block times. People converted their USD to ETH to get it out. The problem with this is the fact that BTC was selling at a premium and ETH was not , which would not support this case.
Possible reason 4
Let me know in the comments and I will edit the post
I don't know what it means, but an addition to "Possible reason 2". If everybody will withdrawn there BTC from Bitfinex, Bitfinex will be forced to sell ETH for BTC to have enougth and this will bring ETH price down. And I am long on ETH. So bad news..
And here is a BTC Autflow chart: https://blockchain.info/de/charts/balance?address=35emx395afKAKAr72VoePVbu3FJvxLPVny×pan=30days
I had wrote a line about this dragging ETH price down and triple punish ETH holders,1 haircut, 2 valuation, and now 3 devaluing ETH. But I felt I was biased as I was/am an ETH holder and if that was a conclusion I would let others make it for themselves.
Also any price drop due to this is temporary.
Thanks for the chart I will add it into post