[DigitalToday reporter Jinju Hong (홍진주)] An early investor wallet that participated in Ethereum's 2015 ICO bought back 8,492.8 ETH by deploying stablecoins worth about $23.7 million. The wallet, which sold ETH in March, re-entered at a higher price about six months later, drawing attention to moves by big investors.

On Sept. 22 (local time), Cryptopolitan, a blockchain outlet, reported the wallet sold ETH in March at about $2,010 per coin and repurchased 8,492.8 ETH on Sept. 21 at an average $2,793.59.

The purchase used four types of stablecoins: DAI, USDS, USDC and USDT. On-chain analyst ai_9684xtpa put the total amount deployed at about $23.72 million. The trade was executed through decentralised trade aggregation service Cow Swap.

The trades were carried out four times over about eight minutes. Wallet address 0xBE42…0c5F bought 3,591.36 ETH using about $10.05 million in DAI and secured 1,611.18 ETH with about $4.49 million in USDS. It then bought 2,527.90 ETH with about $7.06 million in USDC and 762.36 ETH with about $2.13 million in USDT.

Around the same time, the wallet also repaid debt of about 809 in wrapped ether held on DeFi lending protocol Aave. It then withdrew about 8,876 ETH it had posted as collateral. Adding the newly purchased amount, its total holdings are estimated to have risen to about 16,773 ETH.

The wallet's earlier selling point is also drawing attention. Transaction records show the wallet sold 1,923.05 of Aave's wrapped ether on March 27 for 3,866,637.83 USDC. The sale price then was $2,010.68 per ETH. As the ETH price rose, it re-entered the market this time at about $2,794.

The price move immediately after the repurchase was not favourable to the wallet. With ETH trading at about $2,749 on Sept. 22, the newly bought amount entered an unrealised loss of about $382,000. Still, ETH rose to $2,807 within hours after the purchase, topping $2,800 for the first time since Jan. 30, 2026.

The wallet is also in focus as an address linked to early Ethereum sale allocations. On-chain analyst ai_9684xtpa analysed the address as a subscription wallet that was allocated 38,800 ETH at about $0.31 per coin when the Ethereum network launched. The principal at the time was about $12,028, and the same amount was valued at about $108.6 million when ETH rose to around $2,800.

Accumulation by big investors has also continued recently. A separate cluster of addresses bought 21,520 ETH by deploying about $55.8 million over five days from Sept. 18. The average purchase price was $2,593, and it was shown to have recorded unrealised gains of about $3.25 million based on prices at the time. The buying funds were analysed as having been raised by selling UBTC, Hyperliquid's wrapped bitcoin.

Institutional money has also flowed into the ETH market. BitMine, led by Tom Lee, bought an additional 27,562 ETH last week, and was tallied as holding about 4.9 percent of total Ethereum supply. Ethereum spot ETFs also saw net inflows of $270 million on Sept. 21 alone. BlackRock's ETHA led inflows with $110.1 million and Fidelity's FETH with $73 million.

With the 2015 ICO wallet's buyback overlapping with continued accumulation by large whales and institutions, capital flows in the ETH market appear to be shifting. It remains to be seen, however, whether the early investor's re-entry means an increase in long-term holdings, as additional on-chain activity needs to be watched.