Key Takeaways
- A Hut 8-linked wallet sent 1,966 BTC worth $161 million to exchanges, OTC desks and others in 7 days.
- Lookonchain said Hut 8 held 10,278 BTC before the transfers, roughly 15% of which has now moved.
- CEO Asher Genoot said in August that Hut 8’s bitcoin exposure will shift mainly to American Bitcoin.
Following the Coins
The trail starts in custody, and Arkham labelled the source addresses as Hut 8’s Coinbase Prime custody wallets. From there, the coins hopped to a single intermediary address before fanning out. This is how the past week looked for the treasury firm:
- About a week ago: Hut 8 custody sent 243.5 BTC and then 42 BTC to the intermediary, per an Onchain Lens snapshot.
- Oct. 15: Two larger transfers of 263.79 BTC and 654.21 BTC followed, worth about $75 million combined at the time.
- Oct. 15, 22:45 UTC: Another 674.21 BTC and 190.79 BTC arrived, and the intermediary immediately started splitting them into tranches of 20 to 200 BTC.
- Oct. 16, 03:11 UTC: Two final 65 BTC transfers left, and the address left holding less than 0.005 BTC.
Lookonchain flagged 1,589 BTC ($130 million) going into multiple exchanges over two days. Similarly, OnchainLens counted 1,783 BTC ($146 million) leaving Hut 8 custody in a single day, and put the seven-day outflow from the intermediary at 1,966.64 BTC, or $161.26 million.
Onchain data can’t prove a sale as coins sent to an exchange or OTC desk could be collateral, a hedge, or an internal transfer to a new custodian. But the pattern of round-number tranches fanned out to trading venues is what treasury selling usually looks like.
Hut 8 hasn’t put out a statement explaining the moves.
Lastly, Hut 8 held 10,278 BTC, worth about $845.6 million, before the transfers began and one onchain analyst estimates the treasury has moved 15% of its stack in two days.
The Clue Hiding in August
When the company reported its second-quarter results in August, Chief Executive Asher Genoot said:
Going forward, the bitcoin exposure will primarily be at American Bitcoin.
That quarter also brought a $177.1 million net loss, driven by $138.6 million in unrealized digital asset losses.
The company has also been changing its identity for a year and it recently signed a $9.8 billion lease for an artificial intelligence (AI) data center campus in Texas. Building gigawatt-scale AI capacity eats cash, and a bitcoin pile is the most liquid asset on the balance sheet.
The wider sector also seems to be doing the same, with Binance pulling the plug on its bitcoin mining operations this month. At the same time, FTX’s old mining infrastructure has also been turned toward AI-related tooling.
What the Stock Is Saying
HUT shares fell 10.5% on Oct. 14, from $83.61 to $74.87, on volume of almost 12.9 million shares, roughly 2.6 times the previous session’s. The drop came during a broad selloff in chip and AI stocks, with semiconductors shedding over $2 trillion in market value since Oct. 6. The bounce to $76.09 on Oct. 15 came as the transfers sped up.
Meanwhile, other treasury buyers are still adding, with Strive recently adding $280 million in bitcoin just this week.
Why It All Matters for Bitcoin’s Price Action
$161 million is not enough to break the market on its own, and bitcoin is currently trading around $82,000 (after it briefly dipped below $80,000 on Thursday). But a treasury company turning seller lands differently from a whale taking profit. If Hut 8 keeps sending coins out at this pace, bitcoin’s price has to absorb a steady corporate supplier, not just a one-off trade.
The question for next week is simple, i.e. does the next transfer come from the same custody wallets, or has Hut 8 sent what it planned to send?
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