Yesterday On December 4th, almost $9 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC) were moved on-chain within the Bitcoin blockchain in just one hour.

Bitcoin’s high transaction volume was pointed out by Glassnode, an on-chain market intelligence firm. They claimed that such a high hourly transaction value was a record for the Bitcoin network stating:

“It’s the highest hourly USD transaction volume in Bitcoin’s history.”

Bitcoin hourly on-chain transaction volume in U.S. dollars. Source: tweet

Bittrex is the supposed source of transactions

The Glassnode company started working to uncover who or what was behind this unusual transaction increase. On December 5th, Glassnode posted on Twitter, claiming they had uncovered the cause. They stated the spike a result of the cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex moving an immense amount of Bitcoin multiple times.

The tweet continued, explaining that the exchange conducted 21 on-chain transactions within one hour. With each transfer moving around 56,000 BTC (valued at approximately $416 million). The firm also viewed that the transaction fee for these transfers were only about $0.60. The tweet by Glassnode also shared a link to data regarding the first of these transactions.

What’s interesting to note, is that the transactions took place ahead of the exchange’s maintenance scheduled for today.

While at present it is still unclear why the transactions took place, Bittrex have stated that no hack has taken place. Although it is speculated that the reason may be that funds were moved from the exchange’s cold wallets.

