As the year nears to close, Fantom (FTM) draws attention from market participants following a whale who transferred huge amounts of Fantom tokens to Binance today.
A crypto on-chain analyst, popularly known as the Data Nerd, spotted the development and shared it on the X platform. However, such an activity is significant as it could cause bears on the Fantom’s price.
Whale deposits massive amounts of FTM
According to data from the crypto analyst, the whale deposited 10 million FTM tokens worth $8.17 million to Binance today. Metrics analysis indicated that the trader accumulated a sum of 23.45 million Fantom tokens two years ago at an average price of $0.618.
Such transfer signals that the trader intends to sell them or wants to use them in the DeFi markets. In certain cases, he perhaps may want to hold and use it after the Fantom rebranding is complete. Data shows that if he were to sell the 10 million FTM tokens today, he would have earned a profit of $2 million.
This funds movement could have been triggered by the recent announcement by Binance that it will facilitate FTM rebranding and token interchange.
As per the report made on Dec.24, Fantom will change its brand name from “Fantom (FTM)” to a new business trademark called “Sonic (S)” in early January 2025. As part of the rebranding process, Binance announced that it will discontinue withdrawals and deposits of Fantom and remove all its trading pairs such as FTM/ETH, FTM/USDT, FTM/BTC, etc., as from January 13 at 3:30 UTC.
As a result, the FTM coin will start using the crypto ticker “S” on Binance. After the rebranding process is concluded, Binance will rollout trading for S/ETH/ S/USDT, S/BTC, S/USDC, S/EUR, S/BNB/ S/TRY, and S/FDUSD trading pairs beginning January 16 at 8:00 UTC.
After the announcement, investors and traders raised concerns about the impact of the token transition on the Fantom price. However, the report highlighted that all Fantom tokens would be interchanged with Sonic at a 1:1 ratio (1FTM = 1S), showing that there would be no substantial effect on the price.
Fantom price updates
At the time of writing, FTM is trading at $0.7931, down 6.9% over yesterday. It is also down 17.80% in the past seven days, meaning that it is underperforming the global digital assets market which is up 0.10% currently. Furthermore, its trading volume is down 3.40% to $356.619 million, signaling a recent diminish in market activity.
These declines signify a decreased participation from investors and traders following the announcement. Traders’ and long-term holders’ interest after the update appears bearish as they are constantly creating new positions and selling tokens, as per on-chain metrics from Coinglass.
In addition, metrics from FTM spot inflow/outflow show that exchanges have seen substantial inflows of FTM tokens recently. These inflows indicate that long-term holders dump tokens from their wallets to exchanges, reflecting a potential downward trend but a perfect buying opportunity.
According to Coinglass, FTM open interest has decreased by 5.08%, showing the establishment of new positions and reduced participation from traders, indicating rising caution among investors.
