Bitcoin and the overall crypto market have witnessed another significant downturn this year, with prices dropping by double digits in the late hours of Friday, October 10. This bearish pressure started when rumors of a trade war between the United States and China emerged in the early hours of Friday.
Downward pressure increased after US President Donald Trump declared that the US would impose a 100% tariff on Chinese goods. As a result of this announcement, over $5.5 billion was liquidated from the crypto market in less than an hour, with the Bitcoin price briefly dropping to $101,500.
Is this BTC whale connected to the US government?
In a recent post on X, on-chain analyst Maartunn said marked a specific Bitcoin investor from the Satoshi era who may have expected this downturn long before it happened. A look at the trader’s market movements suggests that the big BTC holder almost always knows something the market doesn’t.
As the price of Bitcoin fell steadily throughout the day to $117.00, blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain revealed that these Bitcoin OG continued to pile up their short positions to $1.1 billion. After the BTC crash below $110,000, this major investor made a profit of over $160 million, leading to speculation that they had inside information.
Maartunn went on to highlight the wholesaler’s activities in recent months. According to the analyst’s post on social media platform
Likewise, the BTC whale began shaving off their holdings again as the Bitcoin price rose to new highs in early October. What’s more interesting is that the Satoshi-era investor soon opened leveraged short positions on both Bitcoin and Ethereum on the Hyperliquid platform.
Maartunn thought the timing of these trades could be interesting, especially as the overall crypto market quickly witnessed a downturn following President Trump’s tariff announcement. The on-chain analyst then concluded that the “Satoshi-era OG has insider ties to the US government.”
Bitcoin price at a glance
At the time of writing, the price of BTC is around $113,250, quickly recovering from the plunge to around $101,500. However, the major cryptocurrency is still down almost 7% in the past 24 hours.