Since its launch earlier this year, the price of Arbitrum (ARB) has struggled tremendously. The altcoin launched into a budding bear market and as the bears have assumed more control, the ARB token price has dumped even further. This constant decline in price has led to high volumes of panic-selling, and it seems the whales have joined the bandwagon as well.
Whales Sell Dump ARB Despite Losses
As ARB’s price has continued on a downward trajectory, whales have been selling their holdings into the blood. A report from on-chain tracker Lookonchain shows that some of the largest whales have been selling millions of ARB despite losing millions of dollars in the process.
Lookonchain first flagged a transaction from Wintermute Trading after it sent 4.35 million tokens worth $3.36 million to the Binance exchange. Next, another whale moved 3.8 million tokens worth $2.93 million to Binance as well.
A follow-up chart posted by the tracker shows that seven whales dumped a total of 20.4 million ARB on the open market in a 30-hour period. With ARB prices currently sitting at all-time lows, it means that these investors are taking massive losses due to their recent sales.
Whales dump $16 million in ARB | Source: Lookonchain
In total, the 20.4 million ARB sold by the whales cost them a collective $24.19 million to acquire over the last few months. However, the realized amount from their recent selling came out to $16.05 million. This means that the whales collectively lost over $8 million in the process, translating to a 34% loss of their initial investment.
Primed For A Reversal?
The constant selling has seen the ARB price decline rapidly and this has seen it perform worse than the native tokens of other Ethereum Layer 2 networks. However, the story is far from over for Arbitrum, especially when it comes to its decentralized finance (DeFi) performance.
Despite succumbing to the bear market pressures, Arbitrum continues to maintain the highest total value locked (TVL) of all Layer 2 networks. Its TVL is currently sitting at $2.3 billion compared to $970 million for Polygon and $798 million for Optimism.
Arbitrum TVL remains above $2.3 billion | Source: DeFiLlama
This shows that there is still a high level of faith in the network, especially with its daily active user count still coming up higher than 100,000.
As for ARB’s short-term performance, it remains dependent on if the tide of the crypto market turns soon. Naturally, if the price of Bitcoin starts to rise as sentiment improves, then altcoins like ARB will follow suit and recover.
The ARB price is currently sitting at $0.7731, down 6.46% in the last day and 13.47% in the last week.
Arbitrum price dumps to all-time lows | Source: ARBUSDT on Tradingview.com