Half a trillion XEC

As I’m sure many of you know, I’ve been tracking a single eCash address that has now managed to accumulate over half a trillion XEC. It’s climbed all the way up to third place on the eCash rich list, and since it started four months ago, it has rarely gone a day without adding more.

So, of course, it’s natural to wonder what the hell is going on…

Obviously, anything I say is pure speculation and intended for entertainment purposes only. Besides, even if I told you I knew exactly who this was and what they were up to, would you believe me?

For the record, I have no clue who this could be, but here’s what I do know: this address has been adding XEC almost nonstop since November 3rd of last year, and almost all of it seems to be coming from known exchange wallets or wallets that appear to belong to exchanges like Binance and Upbit.

While 500B XEC may seem like a lot, in USD terms, it’s only a little over $10M worth of eCash at the current price, which isn’t that big of a deal in crypto, especially considering we have previously identified an eCash staking node run by a Bitcoin whale holding more than a billion dollars of BTC.

But it’s also not an insignificant amount of money either. To hold $10M in a single asset, especially one as risky as XEC, requires real conviction in its future potential. You don’t bet that kind of money on anything unless you believe it offers real upside.

Some have wondered if it’s possible that the address belongs to an exchange preparing to list XEC for the first time. While this could indeed be the case, it doesn’t change the fact that you would still need to believe in the project to go to so much trouble. After all, why list something if you think nobody will be interested in buying it and leave you holding the bag?

Another question that often comes up is, how in the world can someone buy 2.5% of eCash’s total circulating supply over the course of a few months without impacting the price? By doing it gradually, of course. Though the the daily trading volume of XEC is relatively small compared to top-ranking cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, there is still enough liquidity to support buying a few billion XEC a day without spiking the market. If you do the math, 500B divided by 120 days would mean roughly 4.2B XEC per day, which is less than $100K at today’s price. Since eCash trading volume frequently exceeds $10M per day, buying $100K worth of XEC daily for an extended period of time wouldn’t be that difficult.

There’s also the possibility that this is someone who has bad intentions. Given that the total amount of staked XEC is 260B, someone with 500B could use their coins to attack the network by exploiting the Avalanche consensus mechanism, which can be left vulnerable when a single entity controls a supermajority of the staked assets.

While this is indeed a concern, it is no different for other cryptocurrencies like the aforementioned BTC and ETH. Crypto relies on network participants acting out of self-interest, or as stated in the Bitcoin whitepaper: “He ought to find it more profitable to play by the rules, such rules that favour him with more new coins than everyone else combined, than to undermine the system and the validity of his own wealth.”

The bottom line is that there’s no way of knowing for certain whether this is a random whale who fell in love with the eCash project, an exchange preparing a new listing, or some malicious actor planning to attack the network. But assuming this person is acting rationally, I think there’s a much greater chance that this is more bullish than bearish.

First, because I don’t see any reason for someone to risk destroying $10M of their own money to kill a network that hardly anyone currently uses. Though I’m not certain, I also don’t think it’s possible for someone to take out a big enough XEC short to profit from either attacking the network or dumping their coins.

However, I do see the potential to pump the XEC price using a combination of strategic accumulation and well-timed market moves. If someone with deep pockets truly believes in eCash’s long-term value, they might be positioning themselves for a major price run-up.

Let’s imagine for a minute that I was a billionaire who wanted to support the creation of a new form of censorship-resistant money to help increase the amount of economic freedom in the world, and I saw eCash as having the best potential to make that happen. How would I go about helping the project achieve its goal of becoming cash for the internet while ensuring I profit from its success?

Quietly accumulating a huge amount of XEC would definitely be a start.

As I said, this is all speculation, but if history has taught us anything, it’s that when someone accumulates a massive stake in a project over an extended period of time, they probably have a plan. Whether that plan works out, or benefits the average XEC holder remains to be seen, but whoever this is, my guess is they’re in it for the long haul, not just another pump and dump.

(While not quite the same as 500B XEC, one person who unlocks this article will be chosen at random to win 100K XEC. The winner will be announced in 24 hours on my X account.)