Solana whale sits on $153M profit after 4-year staking play

A Solana address with over 1 million tokens is sitting on more than $153 million in profit after a four-year staking play on the crypto asset. 

Blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain flagged the wallet address of a whale that staked nearly 1 million Solana (SOL) tokens in 2021. At the time of the staking, Solana tokens were worth around $27, which means the trader spent about $27 million to execute the play. 

Four years later, the whale’s total staked Solana holdings have reached 1.29 million. With Solana appreciating to about $140, the whale’s holdings have increased in value to about $180 million. 

On April 22, the whale started offloading a portion of the token stash to cash out on the gains. Lookonchain reported that the whale had unstaked 100,000 SOL tokens (about $14 million) and sent them to Binance. Sending tokens to crypto exchanges often indicates an intent to sell. 

Lookonchain said the whale still has 1.19 million Solana, worth around $166 million. Since the trader spent $27 million on the play, the total unrealized profit for the address is about $153 million. 

The Solana whale’s unstaking and token offloading follow another Solana staking play that involved hundreds of millions earlier in April. 

On April 4, Arkham Intelligence data showed four wallets that staked $37 million in tokens in 2021 had their tokens unlocked, meaning they can unstake and sell them. The blockchain intelligence platform called the event “the largest single-day unlock of staked SOL.”

During the unlock, the tokens were worth over $206 million. After the tokens were unlocked, about $50 million in tokens were sold. 

Related: Babylon total value locked drops 32% as wallets unstake $1.2B in Bitcoin

As many whales have turned to Solana for staking plays, the network briefly flipped Ethereum in the staking market cap. On April 20, the blockchain overtook Ethereum in staked token value after reaching over $53 billion. Still, the event was short-lived as Ethereum recovered the top spot. 

While the event may seem bullish, community members were split on whether Solana overtaking Ethereum was bullish or bearish for the network. 

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