Rumors Claim Large Bitcoin Wallet Is a Whale’s Stash or Microstrategy’s Wallet Despite Conflicting Data

Five months ago, Bitcoin.com News published a story concerning the speculation surrounding the third-largest bitcoin wallet, as many observers believe the address is a mega whale. The report noted at the time that the address “1P5ZED” shows all the tell-tale signs that it’s an exchange platform, but to this very day speculators still assume and still publish odd conjecture on why they think “1P5ZED” is a massive bitcoin whale.

The “1P5ZED” bitcoin address rumor is making the rounds again, as people wholeheartedly believe that the address is a bullish whale capturing massive quantities of bitcoin. Stories about the “1P5ZED” bitcoin address have been published by crypto news outlets, analysts have claimed the entity has a ‘trading strategy,’ Redditors have published threads on the wallet’s transfers, and the wallet has been a topical conversation on Twitter as well.

For instance, on April 21, 2022, a Twitter account called “Ozz, CEO of Altseason,” tweeted a claim that the company Microstrategy was selling and has sold bitcoin.

“I just realized that Microstrategy has been selling bitcoin without telling no one,” Ozz said. “Michael Saylor said he would never do so, but yesterday he sold more than 1,500 bitcoins. From their main address, bitcoins have been sent to a secondary address that has been using Coinbase and Okex to sell bitcoins,” Ozz added. The Twitter account also said Microstrategy’s addresses were:

• Main custodial address: 1P5ZEDWTKTFGxQjZphgWPQUpe554WKDfHQ
• Secondary custodial address: 1FzWLkAahHooV3kzTgyx6qsswXJ6sCXkSR

While some people called Ozz out on the tweet because the information is 100% incorrect, as the address is not owned by Microstrategy, the tweet still exists with 262 retweets, 163 quoted tweets and close to 1,200 likes at the time of writing. The tweet further caused a large amount of unfounded speculation and rumors about Microstrategy that are untrue.

‼️I just realized that you're a moron.

— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) April 21, 2022

This is because the third-largest bitcoin address is not owned by Microstrategy and is more than likely an exchange platform. Bitcoin.com News has investigated the “1P5ZED” bitcoin address before, and onchain analytics have shown exchange spending patterns like cluster spending.

Onchain analytics from blockchair.com indicate that “1P5ZED” transactions are always settled with very little privacy. The block explorer oxt.me also has two annotations which explain that the “1P5ZED” bitcoin address may be tied to the exchange Bittrex.

However, after Bitcoin.com News published our report on “1P5ZED,” our newsdesk received a message from an individual about the article. The person asked not to be named and explained that they had “access to blockchain analytics tools (Chainalysis and Ciphertrace) as part of their job function.” The individual further added:

There is an almost 100% chance that both addresses in your article, both 1P5ZED and 1FzWLk, belong to Gemini.

Blockchain parsers show that “1FzWLk” transacts quite a bit with “1P5ZED” transactions. “1FzWLk” is also flagged with a note on oxt.me about the address being associated with an exchange. “[1FzWLk] annotated as Okex by Whale Alerts. Though source and cluster spending suggest closer ties to Coinbase and Gemini,” Ergobtc wrote at the time.

While most of the top bitcoin addresses are labeled as exchanges, people continue to hype things up in the crypto media as if this is a mystery bitcoin whale. The fact is the wallet is most likely, with almost a 100% guarantee, a well-known exchange that has not been labeled as a trading platform. Although, as long as the third-largest bitcoin address remains unflagged, it will be open to interpretation and conjecture.

Do you think “1P5ZED” is a random whale address or do you think it belongs to an exchange? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.