Developer says crypto exchange is the likely holder of 36 billion DOGE

The whale holding more than 36 billion DOGE on its address is likely a cryptocurrency exchange. This was disclosed by Dogecoin developer Patrick Lodder to Business Insider.

The first 100 DOGE arrived at the address неизвестного владельца in February 2019. In total he received more than 55.8 billion and sent more than 19 billion tokens. On the wallet’s balance находятся 36.7 billion coins worth $11.69 billion at the current rate.

The address concentrates more than 28% of all DOGE in circulation. Its owner rarely sells the cryptocurrency: the only outgoing transaction in 2021 is dated April. Its volume exceeded 100 million DOGE.

Some analysts believe the wallet belongs to a private individual. However, in Lodder’s view, the address could be controlled by an exchange that uses it for cold storage of cryptocurrency.

“It looks like someone has received a lot of money for safekeeping and moved it into a cold wallet for security,” the developer noted.

The community has several theories about who owns the address. In January 2021, a participant in the BitcoinTalk forum suggested it could be connected with Elon Musk.

In February, Bloomberg noted that the address’s creation coincided with the start of Dogecoin support on the Robinhood platform.

According to Lodder, it is unlikely that a single person controls the address. However, the only way to determine this would be to ask the owner to present cryptographic proof, which he is unlikely to agree to, the developer added.

In his words, the mere existence of such a wallet harms Dogecoin. Speculation about it causes panic among investors, he explained.

Earlier, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin criticized Musk for comments about increasing Dogecoin’s scalability and lowering fees in its network.

Earlier, Tesla founder Elon Musk posted another tweet in support of the meme token. After this, DOGE’s price rose by 20%.