Wallet Spends $37.96 Million to Buy Ethereum as Network Fees Jump to $47.3 Million
Key Facts
Wallet 0x9EcA spent about 37.96 million USDC to buy 16,658 ETH at an average of $2,279 per unit over two hours, according to a Lookonchain post dated November 2. The post said the wallet continued buying, without identifying the execution venue. The purchases came as daily fees across Ethereum protocols combined reached $47.3 million on October 30, according to CryptoQuant. The platform described the figure as the highest in its chart covering February to October 2026. CryptoQuant linked the increase to exceptional trading activity following the hack of Binance hot wallets on October 29.
October 30 fees exceeded the February 6 reading of $34.5 million by $12.8 million, or 37.1%, according to CryptoQuant. In terms of transaction execution costs, base gas fees rose from about 0.1 Gwei during most of October to nearly 253 Gwei on October 29, based on data the platform cited from Block Scholes. The increase coincided with movements linked to the hack, as the attacker moved quickly to convert stolen tokens into ETH and TRX, according to CryptoQuant's analysis. The platform said the transfers created arbitrage opportunities that prompted trading bots to compete to execute trades ahead of their rivals. The fee increase illustrated the intensity of competition for block space and processing priority during that period.
Binance said its hot wallets were hacked at about 20:05 UTC on October 29, and that the incident resulted in the loss of an estimated $6.3 billion in tokenized assets. Bitquery estimated that competing bots paid $29.5 million to block builders and validators to execute their trades ahead of rivals, as cited by CryptoQuant. In a 4.5-hour window after the incident, MEV bots' tips to block builders jumped to 10,251 ETH, compared with 4.6 ETH the previous night, an increase of more than 2,200 times, according to CryptoQuant. These figures show one aspect of the activity that accompanied the conversion of stolen tokens, which the platform said put exceptional pressure on fees. The data distinguish the large wallet's purchase from fee movements driven by network activity after the hack.
The disruption during those days was reflected in ETH's price: EL7 data show the close fell from $2,359.68 on October 28 to $2,245.54 on October 30, before reaching $2,281.91 on November 2. Investing.com data showed a daily decline of 4.51% on October 29, followed by a further 0.34% drop on October 30. The price posted daily gains of 0.48% on October 31 and 0.86% on November 1, according to the same data. The wallet purchase identified by Lookonchain coincided with this volatile period, but represented the move of a single wallet. Fee data, by contrast, measure activity across the network's protocols and do not mean that the ETH buyer alone caused the increase.
In response to the incident, Binance said in an October 30 update that it had allocated more than $6.34 billion in company funds, including $5 billion in assets with affected tokens, to cover losses; it estimated this would cover about 80% of the affected amount. It added that about $3 billion in assets had been frozen on-chain by the time of the update, while recovery efforts would continue. The platform had temporarily suspended withdrawals while conducting security checks, while deposits and unaffected services continued. It said it aimed to begin resuming withdrawals within about 34 hours of the update, in stages and subject to completion of the checks. It also aimed to publish an initial result from its proof-of-reserves snapshot by Monday, November 2, 2026.
The incident comes amid previous attacks on cryptocurrency exchanges. The Associated Press reported that Bybit suffered a $1.5 billion loss in a hack in February 2025. The agency cited Binance as saying that most user assets are held in offline cold wallets. For the Ethereum network, the roadmap schedules the Glamsterdam upgrade for the second half of 2026 and includes changes aimed at raising the block gas limit from the current 60 million units to about 200 million. Ethereum's page said the upgrade includes block-level access lists and separating block proposal from block building within the protocol. It noted, however, that upgrade timing is difficult to determine precisely because roadmap items proceed in parallel and evolve at different speeds. Binance's next announced deadline in this incident was to publish an initial proof-of-reserves snapshot by November 2.