On-chain data from whale transaction tracker Whale Alerts has revealed multiple transfers of changing hands between unknown whales and crypto exchanges Binance and Robinhood. Large whale transfers such as this one, which collectively amounted to 1.88 billion DOGE tokens throughout the week, tend to catch investors’ attention over their motives. But this elaborate shuffle between whales could be attributed to the approaching DOGE-1 space mission to take Dogecoin to the moon.

Dogecoin Whales Transfer Millions Of Dollars

Whale Alert showed whales moving large transfers to and from Binance, Robinhood, and unknown wallets totaling more than 1.88 billion Dogecoin. Large transfers kickstarted on the first day of the month of 56.9 million DOGE worth $5.079 million to Coinbase. The tracker reported a flurry of large transfers on January 3, starting with 82 million DOGE worth $6.74 million to Robinhood. In less than 15 minutes, another whale wallet of 102 million DOGE tokens worth $8.4 million to Robinhood. Hours later, a occurred, with 151 million DOGE tokens worth $12.4 million making their way out of Robinhood to a private wallet.

Whale transfers continued into January 4 with hundreds of millions of DOGE in each transfer. The of the day was 300 million DOGE worth $24.6 million sent from an unknown wallet to crypto exchange Binance. Hours later, 307 million DOGE worth $25.4 million between unknown wallets. At the same time, another alert revealed that unknown wallets had participated in the exchange of 883 million DOGE tokens, which had a total value of $72.9 million.

Possible Explanation Behind The Whale Transfers

The whale activity comes against the backdrop of the planned mission to take DOGE to the moon. The planned mission called DOGE-1 was paid exclusively with Dogecoins and initially planned to take place in December 2023. However, Intuitive Machines, the company behind the launch in partnership with Space X, postponed the launch date to sometime in mid-February 2024.

The launch of DOGE-1 mission was first on Twitter (now called X) on May 9, 2021, and has since been approved by the NTIA and FCC. The main purpose of the mission is to broadcast art inspired by Dogecoin on the Doge-1 satellite, which will be orbiting the Moon. The satellite will be carried by a Space X rocket and the Dogecoin-inspired art will be broadcast to Earth. It’s been anticipated that the mission, if eventually carried out, will contribute to a DOGE price surge. 

The price of DOGE has reacted negatively to the movements, as the crypto is down by double digits in the past week. At the time of writing, DOGE is trading at $0.07973, down by 12% in a 7-day timeframe.

Featured image from iStock