Whale Who Lost $18M on Ethereum Jumps Ship to Gold Amid Uncertainty

After losing millions trading altcoin leader Ethereum, an unidentified whale has now rotated to gold, as broader derisking efforts strengthen.

Lookonchain shared the new adventure from this address on Friday, as it looks to gain some ground after its last dip-buying exercise 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 crypto market continued to dip, the whale gave in and sold almost everything for $92.19 million. With this, he realized an $18 million loss after just two weeks, a move that the whale might be regretting, as the Ethereum bag has now slightly recovered to $93.6 million at the current market price of $3,020.

Ethereum Whale Turns to Gold

Meanwhile, the whale has made a new move, underscoring his resilience despite substantial portfolio downsides. Today, he switched from crypto to precious metals, amassing Tether’s tokenized gold token (XAUT).

Data shows the address “0xFdC” spent $14.58 million in USDT to buy 3,299 XAUT. The acquisition started at 05:59 (UTC) on Friday, with the whale stacking the precious metal over several transactions. Overall, the whale bought the tokens at an average price of $4,421.

Remarkably, this builds on its gold acquisition three weeks ago. The wallet made a similar XAUT purchase on December 13, but on a smaller scale compared to today. At the time of writing, the address holds 3,386 XAUT tokens worth $14.92 million.

Notably, his $91 million portfolio, formerly heavily denominated in Ethereum, now holds $58 million in USDT, $18 million in USDC, and XAUT, reflecting the whale’s conservative approach amid ongoing crypto market uncertainty.

Gold, Silver’s 2025 Performance Raises Major Allocation Debate

Notably, market participants expected Bitcoin and Ethereum to have a blossoming 2025. This is because the assets had outperformed store-of-value assets like gold and silver in the previous final years of the four-year cycle.

However, this was not the case last year, as Bitcoin declined by 6% and Ethereum by 11% in 2025. In contrast, gold rallied 65%, and silver did even better, rising 147%, as the sector and most traditional assets, like the S&P 500, Dow Jones, and Nasdaq 100, outperformed the crypto market.

With industry leaders split on the four and five-year business cycle narratives, investors seem to be derisking into assets viewed as stores of value and hedges against uncertainty. Notably, their outperformance of the crypto industry also adds to their allure to investors.

Nonetheless, there is growing confidence that Bitcoin will spur a broader crypto market rebound. Analysts at the prominent asset manager VanEck are among those who project this turnaround in 2026.

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