A high-profile whale wallet executed a complex Bitcoin buying strategy by borrowing $27 million from Aave V3, a popular decentralized lending platform displaying market confidence and intricate leveraging. The whale was able to amass 366.31 Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) at an average purchase value of $73,708. The series of transactions occurred within two hours, which proved the efficiency of decentralized finance (DeFi) in high-stakes market swapping.
A whale is long $BTC again via recursive borrowing!The whale borrowed $27M from #Aave to buy 366.31 $WBTC at an average price of $73,708 in the past 2 hours.Address:0x488b99c4A94BB0027791E8e0eEB421187EC9a487 pic.twitter.com/6eQEE6I3Y3
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) November 6, 2024
The Mechanics of Recursive Borrowing
The whale used a “recursive borrowing” strategy, which involved various assets being borrowed, traded and supplied back to get the maximum amount of profits from the collateral. The whale started by borrowing USDT (Tether) from Aave V3 and then used this money to acquire WBTC.
In each stage, the newly bought WBTC was used to repay as collateral for borrowing and purchasing more WBTCs. This recursive borrowing strategy increased the prominence of the whale in Bitcoin without having to invest more personal funds, which was an incredibly effective yet very dangerous strategy in such volatile markets.
Transactions in Detail
As reported by blockchain analysis platform Lookonchain, the whale carried out multiple swaps with CoW Swap, a decentralized exchange. All the swaps involved purchasing pieces of WBTC with USDT; each exchange was estimated to cost around $500,000 USDT. The average entry price for each WBTC for the whale was estimated at 73,708$, which is quite a significant amount invested in an emerging market.
As per the data on the Aave V3, the final portfolio presented the whale with 498.6896 WBTC and 11,839.9546 staked Ethereum worth about $36.5 million & $30.6 million, respectively.
Furthermore, we can see outstanding borrowings of $17M in USDT and $10M in USDC with an impressive Health Rate of 1.96, which can be regarded as fairly conservative given the current market conditions.
Implications for the Bitcoin Market
This high-profile leveraged bet on Bitcoin demonstrates how decentralized finance protocols like Aave can now power complex trading models that were traditionally the domain of centralized financial institutions. The whale buying Bitcoin with the confidence that its price will rise could cause other traders to follow the same pattern. However, recursive borrowing also opens up possibilities for liquidation risks in case of a market downturn, which in turn introduces an element of volatility to the value of Bitcoin.
