An unidentified whale has turned to gold as widespread de-risking efforts intensify after losing millions of dollars trading altcoin leader Ethereum.
look on chain share Friday’s new venture from this address comes as it looks to regain some momentum after its last push buy backfired. For context, the wallet spent $110 million to buy 31,005 ETH between November 3 and 7, 2025, at an average price of $3,581.
As the cryptocurrency market continued to decline, Whale relented and sold almost everything for $92.19 million. This cost him $18 million in losses in just two weeks, but Whale may regret this action. Ethereum The bag has now recovered slightly to $93.6 million at its current market price of $3,020.
Ethereum whale turns to gold
Meanwhile, Whales made a new move, underscoring its resilience despite a significant decline in its portfolio. Today, he switched from cryptocurrencies to precious metals and accumulated Tether’s tokenized gold token (XAUT).
According to the data, the address “0xFdC” spent $14.58 million in USDT to purchase 3,299 XAUT. The acquisition began on Friday at 05:59 UTC, with Whale accumulating precious metals over several trades. Overall, whales bought tokens at an average price of $4,421.
Notably, this is based on gold wins from three weeks ago. The wallet made a similar XAUT purchase on December 13th, but on a smaller scale than today. At the time of writing, this address holds 3,386 XAUT tokens worth $14.92 million.
Notably, his $91 million portfolio, which was previously heavily denominated in Ethereum, now holds $58 million in USDT, $18 million in USDC, and XAUT, reflecting Whale’s conservative approach amid continued uncertainty in the crypto market.
Gold and Silver’s 2025 Performance Sparks Big Allocation Debate
In particular, market participants expected Bitcoin and Ethereum to blossom in 2025. This is because Bitcoin and Ethereum have historically outperformed store-of-value assets such as gold and silver in the final year of their four-year cycles.
However, this was not the case last year, with Bitcoin falling by 6% and Ethereum by 11% in 2025. In contrast, gold rose 65%; silver The sector and most traditional assets such as the S&P 500, Dow Jones, and Nasdaq 100 outperformed the crypto market and fared even better, rising 147%.
Industry leaders are split on the outlook for the four- and five-year business cycle, and investors appear to be avoiding risk in assets seen as stores of value or hedges of uncertainty. Notably, it has also outperformed the crypto industry, making it more appealing to investors.
Nevertheless, there is growing confidence that Bitcoin will fuel a recovery in the broader crypto market. analyst of Renowned asset management company VanEck He is among those who expect this turnaround to occur in 2026.