After dumping over 1.3 million tokens in the span of 11 days, big Ethereum wallets — known as sharks and whales — have returned and started reaccumulating at an impressive pace.
At the same time, Tom Lee, who has been behind Bitmine’s sizeable ETH purchases over the past several months, remains highly bullish on the asset, indicating that leverage has been wiped out and it’s clear for takeoff.
Whales Are Back
Santiment reported that these wallets, holding between 100 and 10,000 ETH, had disposed of 1.36 million coins between October 5 and 16. At the time, ETH’s price was quite volatile, surging beyond $4,750 only to dump beneath $3,500 during the October 10 market-wide crash.
However, their behaviour has changed in the past week or so, and they are “finally showing some signs of confidence.” The analytics platform added that they have added back “close to 1/6th” of the sold-off stash since then and classified it as a “positive sign for crypto’s #2 market cap.”
Tom Lee also weighed in on the October 10 crash, which was primarily driven by excessive leverage used in futures trading. Over $19 billion was wiped out, with more than 1.6 million traders wrecked in less than 24 hours. Lee, who spearheads the largest ETH treasury company and holds nearly $13 billion in the asset, recently noted that open interest for BTC and ETH has fallen to historic lows, which could open the door to a “crypto rally into the end of the year.”
ETH’s Price Meaning
Large investors, such as sharks, whales, and corporations, buying substantial portions of a certain asset is typically regarded as a bullish development for it because they reduce the immediate selling pressure. The crypto community is also filled with big price predictions for ETH, with the most talked-about targets at $5,000 and $10,000.
While the first seems quite possible for the short-term, given the fact that ether came inches away from it a few months back, the second is a bit far-fetched at the moment. Ali Martinez also outlined it in a recent post and said ETH will eventually hit it, but “just not as soon as you think.”
Ethereum $ETH will hit $10,000… Just not as soon as you think! pic.twitter.com/WVkjF8bKdl
— Ali (@ali_charts) October 25, 2025