ICO Era Whale Buys ETH at $2,794 as Ethereum Price Now Sits At $2,720

Published:Sep 22, 2026, 5:30 AM EDTICO Era Whale Buys ETH at $2,794 as Ethereum Price Now Sits At $2,720

A wallet linked to an Ethereum initial coin offering (ICO) participant swapped $23.7 million in stablecoins for 8,492.8 ETH on Sept. 21, six months after selling ETH near $2,010.

WRITTEN BYShiraz JagatiSHAREPublished: Sep 22, 2026, 5:30 AM EDT

Key Takeaways

• The ICO-era wallet bought 8,492.8 ETH through four Cow Swap orders on Sept. 21 at about $2,794 each.
• Hours later ETH touched $2,807, its first trade above $2,800 since Jan. 30, 2026.
• A separate cluster has bought 21,520 ETH since Sept. 18 and sits on about $3.25M in paper gains.

Four Orders in Eight Minutes

The trade surfaced through onchain analyst ai_9684xtpa, who described the buyer as an ICO-era whale re-entering the market after half a year away. The wallet, 0xBE42…0c5F, placed four sell orders for stablecoins on Cow Swap, a decentralized exchange aggregator that batches trades, and every one of them filled:

• 10,049,997.50 DAI for 3,591.36 ETH
• 4,493,614.20 USDS for 1,611.18 ETH
• 7,055,997.28 USDC for 2,527.90 ETH
• 2,125,834.46 USDT for 762.36 ETH

That is $23.73 million for 8,492.8 ETH, an average of about $2,794 per coin. Moreover, onchain records show the stablecoins left the wallet between 15:29 and 15:37 UTC on Sept. 21. In the same session, the wallet repaid roughly 809 wrapped ether (WETH) of debt on Aave, a decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol, and withdrew about 8,876 ETH of collateral. It now holds around 16,773 ETH.

That said, at current levels, the ICO whale’s fresh 8,492.8 ETH is roughly $550,000 underwater, while the five-day accumulator is still comfortably ahead.

The $0.31 Origin Story

The same whale subscribed to 38,800 ETH during Ethereum’s ICO at about $0.31 per coin, tokens that arrived when the network went live in 2015. That stake cost roughly $12,028 at the time and would be worth about $106 million at yesterday’s local high near $2,800 (its first print above $2,800 since late January).

It bears mentioning that wallets from that era rarely trade, which is why trackers’ eyes light up when any of these accounts start moving. And even when they do move, it is typically to accrue a profit. However, this whale bought.

That said, an interesting detail sits two rows lower in the wallet’s order history, as on March 27, the same address sold 1,923.05 Aave-wrapped ether for 3,866,637.83 USDC at $2,010.68 per coin. ETH closed that day at $1,992.

Not the Only Buyer in Town

Another larger pattern of a similar nature was flagged earlier today as an entity spreading its buying across fresh addresses accumulated 21,520 ETH, worth about $55.8 million, over five straight days starting Sept. 18.

To elaborate, it bought from $2,450 up to $2,762 for an average of $2,593 and now sits on roughly $3.25 million in paper gains. Four newly linked addresses took 6,247.2 ETH in the nine hours before the accumulation was caught by onchain sleuths.

The entity was tied to selling UBTC, Hyperliquid’s wrapped bitcoin, to buy ETH. That echoes the same play as the Hyperliquid whale that swapped 1,107 BTC for 34,422 ETH, which Bitcoin.com News reported on Sept. 21, although no one has confirmed they are the same buyer.

Corporate treasuries are buying too, with Tom Lee’s Bitmine adding 27,562 ETH last week (now holding about 4.9% of ETH’s supply). However, funds have been the exception, with spot ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) shedding $140 million in the week leading up to Sept. 18, leaving large wallets to lead the rally.

Lastly, it bears mentioning that ether did not break out alone, with bitcoin’s price also running up to $87,395 yesterday.

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