The announcement that Coinbase’s Ethereum-compatible blockchain, Base, has officially opened to the public barely made a splash in the ocean of crypto news this week. The reason? The crypto whales, the heavy-hitters of the digital market, have been comfortably laying their chips on the new layer 2 network and other similar blockchains for several days.
With portfolios boasting more than just the market-leading ETH, it seems 22 wealthy depositors to Base have also invested largely in Arbitrum’s governance token ARB, the casino token RLB, and the memecoins BALD, TOSHI, PEPE and the creatively named HarryPotterObamaSonic10Inu, with the ticker ironically called, ‘BITCOIN’ — a memecoin, according to a Nansen report. Notably, these whales have displayed a strong alignment towards crypto, with each having bridged over 100 ETH since July 31, when Base was first accessible to user interaction through a one-way smart contract bridge.
These whales haven’t been shy about diversifying their investments either. Half of the early depositors of Base hail from wallets that were created within the year, indicating a surge of new entries into the market. In addition, these early depositors have proven active in competitive Ethereum scaling options including Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync Era and Polygon zkEVM.
Niklas Polk, an analyst from Nansen, remarked: “There is a heavy memecoin bias in the selection of these whales. There was not much else to do on Base except for riding the wave of meme coins.”
Another interesting observation noted by Jake Kennis, a research analyst with Nansen, is the pronounced tendency of these whales towards Ethereum and L2 ecosystems. Kennis highlights the interactions by early Base whales with established DEXs, L2 bridges, and the mention of Unibot in particular, showing a move towards the adoption of Telegram bots and new applications.
As Kennis suggests, with the advent of more apps and platforms such as DEXs and lending platforms, we might witness a more mature ecosystem that isn’t solely revolving around memecoins. This trend illustrates the complexity and dynamism of the crypto world, where attention and investment can shift as swiftly as the tide. Ultimately, while skepticism remains around the reliability and longevity of memecoins, what’s clear is that the whales are making waves, and those waves are worth watching.
Source: Coindesk
