We are very exited to share an exclusive interview with the co-founder of Whale Alert with you, where he is taking about unknown wallets, whale activities and consequences with real incidents, and also referring to the importance of transparency.
(Frank : Co-Founder at Whale Alert)
Interview Date :13th February 2020
The beginning of Whale Alert
I am one of the founders of whale Alert. We have been developing for a long time and we used to create all sorts of stuff, mostly websites and business applications. During 2017 we were actively trading and we noticed that the market was very volatile. We wanted to find out why this was happening so we decided to create some tools. One of these was a Bitcoin and Ethereum tracker that informed us of large transfers to and from exchanges. After the big crash we decided to stop trading and shelved most of our tools. After a while we discovered that the scanner was still running and we decided to share it with the rest of the community through a Twitter channel and it turned out to be very popular.
The Importance of Transparency
I think it’s everything. It is not possible to have trust without transparency. It is not just about showing big transaction transfers, but we are showing people where the money is going, especially Tether and the other stable coins, and whether they are being minted or being burned. This is to show that there is actual value moving. I think before Whale Alert it was really hard for people to tell that blockchain was really alive. However, with Whale Alert, you can actually see the movements and working as part of the economy. And that’s one part of transparency.
We Track Whales
We decided to to give a little bit more insight to what a whale actually is with examples of whales and how rich they actually are. For example, we tracked Jed McCaleb for a bit and checked his previous transactions. Jed McCaleb is a really rich man because of XRP, and because of blockchain. The thing is, he has so much power in that blockchain that in terms of how much he actually has, and how big his assets are, he has the ability to completely destroy the market in one transaction.
Now, let’s consider the numbers on a particular Cryptocurrency data site at times aren’t very accurate according to some researchers. One of the bigger sites in particular, estimated 40 billion circulation supply of XRP. However after our research and calculations, we found out that there is an estimate of 25 billion XRP actual circulation supply. Our estimate is that Jed McCaleb still has around 4.7 billion XRP. If you look at the numbers and compare 25 billion against 4.7 billion and try to compared to the total circulating supply, it’s really a lot. However, they limited his power with an agreement they made between Ripple and Jed McCaleb. We don’t know that’s when it’s going to end or anything about that agreement, but what is for sure is that, when it’s going to end that’s when it could go poorly for a lot of people.
That’s one of the reasons for why we try to inform people a bit more about what the market actually looks like, and provide more information so that they actually can determine for themselves for their next step. It’s not only the movement of price or volatility, but there is so much more behind it, especially so much more money behind it. When we wrote the article on Jed McCaleb, the price of XRP was around 25 cents, compared to 30 cents now. Virtually, he managed to make about 100 to 200 million in one day. I am still having difficulties understanding how that’s possible. We just want people to be careful. We don’t want anybody to panic or anything, we are really all about that people need to do their own research and we are providing these information allowing them to be able to do the research.
Tracking ”Unknown Wallets”
When we see very large unknown transfers, we try to see if we can figure out who the owner of that wallet is. If we suspect a certain exchange is the owner, we often contact the exchange directly for confirmation. Unfortunately, sometimes it is not easy or even possible to find out who the owner is.
Recent Money Laundering Activities
I really don’t like people focusing so much on that part of blockchain because it is really unfair to the whole system. Most of the criminal activity in the world is being done with cash and dollars with the aid of banks and nobody ever talks about those problems. Nobody knows exactly how many dollars there are, nobody knows where they are or how many fake dollars there are or what they are being used for. Compare that to blockchain: we know where it is, how much there is and when it is used. In my opinion the stupidest thing you can do right now is using bitcoin for illegal activities. Even if we don’t find out now that it is being used for illegal activities, the ledger holds everything and all of the data is on the blockchain. So there still is a risk of that we might find out in the future.
Interviewer , Editor : Lina Kamada
【Disclaimer】
The Article published on this our Homepage are only for the purpose of providing information. This is not intended as a solicitation for cryptocurrency trading. Also, this article is the author’s personal opinions, and this does not represent opinion for the Company BTCBOX co.,Ltd.