How did he get into the inner circle of the 80,000 BTC whale?
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How did he get into the inner circle of the 80,000 BTC whale?
The era no longer rewards those who run fast; power is returning to the stewards of the rules.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy: Lin Wanwan
In the world of crypto, the loudest moves aren't made by noisy trading—but by quietly pocketing 9 billion dollars through connections.
In July 2025, an address holding 80,000 bitcoins that had lain dormant for 14 years suddenly moved its holdings—one of the largest nominal Bitcoin transactions in history. Such a transfer should have triggered a 30% market crash, but reality was different—no sharp drop, no panic. The market quietly absorbed this batch of Bitcoin.
Nine billion dollars worth of chips were silently swallowed by the market. The orchestrator was neither an exchange nor a hedge fund, but a relatively obscure Wall Street player: Galaxy Digital.
During the latest Q2 earnings call on August 5, someone asked the CEO: How did you secure the client for 80,000 BTC? Was there a formal bidding process?
The CEO casually replied: "For this deal, relationships mattered more than pricing."
Who exactly stands behind Galaxy Digital? What kind of political and financial resources were mobilized to execute this epic transaction? And what new power structure is being woven through this network of connections?
High-Level "Friendship Circle": Political Capital on the Board
The key to this deal wasn’t public bids—it was private connections, all pointing to one veteran Wall Street figure.
Mike Novogratz, the 56-year-old founder, is a classic product of Wall Street.
He spent 11 years at Goldman Sachs, starting from the Southeast Asia futures desk and eventually becoming a partner in fixed income. At the time, Novogratz was among the rare few who could navigate macro trading, portfolio management, and national policy.
Later, he joined Fortress Investment Group, leading macro strategy investments and becoming one of the earliest key figures to bet on emerging markets and sovereign debt.
During that period, he frequently visited policy institutions, central banks, and finance ministries across Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe, negotiating bond issuances and exchange rate policies, mastering the logic of leverage and sovereignty in gray zones.
Between 2012 and 2015, he served on the New York Fed’s Investment Advisory Committee, directly participating in policy consultation, monetary mechanism research, and financial institution evaluations. This gave him a rare dual capability—understanding both derivatives trading and the language and rhythm of regulators.
This is someone who has operated at the intersection of political power, Wall Street capital, and information for over a decade.
As early as 2013, he used personal funds to heavily invest in Bitcoin and Ethereum, committing around $7 million in total. By 2017, he publicly stated in a CNBC interview: "Over the past two years, I've earned over $250 million from crypto assets."
But he is neither a native of the crypto industry nor a typical speculator. His real turning point came in 2015—when losses from his large bet on Brazilian interest rates led to his exit from Fortress and a brief retreat from frontline investing. During this “gap period,” he first seriously examined Bitcoin and rebuilt his understanding of money, credit, and financial infrastructure.
Yet Novogratz didn’t stop at simply holding Bitcoin like many early crypto evangelists. His ambition was to build a new financial institutional framework for the on-chain world. He said: "I see a systemic gap—the liquidity in crypto is deepening, but there's no structure."
In his view, the entire chain of traditional finance—asset management, market making, clearing, ETF custody, PIPE financing, audit disclosure, regulatory lobbying—had no equivalent in crypto. It was an institutional wilderness in urgent need of reconstruction.
Galaxy Digital was born out of this structural gap.
In 2018, Novogratz personally invested $350 million, reverse-merging with Canadian shell company Bradmer Pharmaceuticals to go public, creating the first full-stack crypto financial platform targeting institutional clients. This was a firm designed as a “Wall Street version of an on-chain investment bank.”
But moving from a Canadian exchange to Nasdaq took Galaxy Digital 1,320 days—nearly four years. During this time, the company endured nine rounds of SEC feedback, countless legal reviews, and spent over $25 million to meet compliance requirements. While much of the crypto industry faced regulatory winter and retreated overseas, Galaxy held its ground.
It is not a trading platform, nor a VC firm, but a “financial infrastructure provider” in crypto. Galaxy Digital was built to be a “Wall Street-style Goldman Sachs on-chain.” Its structure clearly reflects his Wall Street roots:
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Service list modeled after Goldman Sachs: covering asset management, market making, OTC trading, proprietary trading, risk management, and financial advisory;
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Trading structure modeled after Citadel: supporting dark pool matching, low-latency derivatives systems, and integration with ETF liquidity;
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Policy approach modeled after Brookings: establishing a policy research team, writing reports, participating in hearings, entering regulatory sandboxes;
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Compliance path modeled after Deloitte and EY: building a “digital asset legal packaging system” that supports financial statement accounting and audit disclosure.
The core of it all is the “political-business network” cultivated through Galaxy’s board.
Galaxy Digital’s board includes Tyler Williams, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, seconded in 2025 by the current Treasury Secretary as a special advisor on digital assets—he translates crypto language into regulatory terms and serves as a key bridge between Galaxy and agencies like the SEC, CFTC, and FASB.
Another board member, Doug Deason, is one of Texas’ most influential real estate and energy lobbyists. He helped pass multiple laws related to mining farms, electricity pricing, and taxation, playing a crucial role in Galaxy’s successful transformation of Bitcoin mining facilities into AI computing centers.
This convergence of “policy, capital, and technology” gives Galaxy an extremely rare “policy influence capability” within the crypto space.
In the financial architecture he built, Galaxy doesn’t just trade or manage assets—it acts as a “legal electrification” service provider, enabling traditional companies to enter the on-chain world.
Unlike CZ’s operational excellence or SBF’s aggressive capital strategies, Mike Novogratz represents another type of founder. He never emphasizes “decentralization,” but rather “structural arrangements.” He doesn’t measure success solely by token price, but focuses instead on whether privacy, regulation, institutions, finance, custody, and compliance pathways are truly functional.
This explains why, despite not having the highest traffic, Galaxy became the only player capable of securing, settling, and reassuring counterparties during the silent 80,000 BTC transaction.
Many assume Galaxy Digital’s moat is capital—but its real advantage lies in its political-financial fluency.
The Bankers Behind Crypto Treasuries
The 80,000 BTC move was just one corner of this network. Companies represented by Asian首富 CZ are now turning to Galaxy Digital as their “political passport” to compliance.
In mid-2025, a new mainstream narrative quietly emerged on U.S. equities: crypto stocks. Wall Street is undergoing a capital “shell swap”—packing BTC and ETH into public companies, allowing crypto assets to officially enter Wall Street under the banner of financial statements.
Yet until the end of 2023, this was considered taboo in capital markets.
American firms struggled to “legally hold crypto” because their financial systems couldn’t accommodate it. Under then-current FASB accounting rules, crypto assets like Bitcoin could only be recorded as “intangible assets”—meaning declines required write-downs, but gains couldn’t be recognized as profits, distorting corporate financial statements and complicating audits.
For example, if you bought 10,000 ETH, any drop in price had to be immediately recorded as a loss, but price increases were ignored and couldn’t count toward profit. This made corporate books look bad and audits a mess.
It wasn’t until the 2025 fiscal year that FASB introduced new rules allowing valuation at “fair value,” recognizing gains when prices rise—finally opening the door to compliant crypto holdings.
Galaxy was among the first to walk through—and began guiding a wave of public companies into legal participation.
The first to spot the opportunity were ancient ETH whales. They quietly packaged their ETH into U.S. shell companies, using circular transfers to indirectly cash out via stock market liquidity—without disturbing the market. SharpLink Gaming became the leader in this “cash-out strategy.”
Soon after, Asian首富 CZ followed suit—embedding his company’s platform token BNB into a U.S. public company, leveraging shell structures, rebranding, and listing to turn the platform token into a compliant asset integrated into capital valuation frameworks.
Behind these maneuvers, Galaxy Digital quietly surfaced—as the mastermind consultant.
It customized “crypto treasury” narratives for these firms: from OTC accumulation and asset custody to compliant disclosure and staking yields—every step relied on Galaxy’s political-business channels, precisely navigating the gray zone between regulatory blind spots and capital leverage.
Galaxy Digital operates in three core areas: OTC trading + custody + strategic advisory.
It boasts top-tier OTC trading capabilities in the U.S., enabling large-scale matching and risk hedging for clients amid volatility. It also offers compliant asset management services such as ETF custody, staking, and tax reporting, managing billions in digital assets. More importantly, it deeply participates in enterprise clients’ strategic planning—from PIPE financing and asset classification to financial accounting and disclosure pathways—even co-investing with its own capital to help traditional firms transform into “crypto treasuries.”
Take SharpLink Gaming, the leading ETH treasury company, as an example. The firm purchased ETH via Galaxy’s OTC desk and signed an asset management agreement. Part of the acquired ETH is custodied with Galaxy, and the entire process—from fundraising to disclosure—is guided by Galaxy. It provides clients with a complete “on-chain financial structure,” including PIPE structures, coin vault classifications, and custody proofs, enabling stealthy yet compliant accumulation.
According to SEC filings, Galaxy and ParaFi Capital charge tiered management fees of 0.25%–1.25%, with a minimum of $1.25 million annually. As SharpLink’s holdings grow, Galaxy secures stable long-term revenue.
This is no longer just a single transaction, but a clearly structured, high-margin “on-chain treasury business.” In the institutionalization of crypto finance, Galaxy is becoming the essential gateway for firms seeking to legally “hold and account for crypto.”
This model isn’t a simple template—it’s a full pathway:
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First, help you buy crypto discreetly and compliantly: provide OTC access combined with PIPE investment structures, targeted placements, and warrant programs;
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Second, teach you how to “put crypto on your balance sheet”: how to get auditors to verify that these coins actually exist;
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Third, solve your U.S. political access: handle the entire compliance journey for U.S. equities—how to disclose, end-to-end. Galaxy is involved in nearly every critical step as traditional firms transition into crypto treasuries.
CEO Novogratz said during the Q2 call: "Virtually every traditional Wall Street institution is preparing for a new financial architecture—assets moving from accounts to wallets, funds and stocks becoming tokenized, stablecoins becoming mainstream payment vehicles."
What Galaxy does is turn these institutional shifts from “concepts” into “balance sheets.”
For many public companies, choosing Galaxy Digital isn’t just about selecting a crypto service provider—it’s like choosing a channel with “political legitimacy.”
Rewiring the Power Structure of Crypto
In 2025, the crypto industry appears to be entering a spring of formalization: ETF approvals, stablecoin legislation, corporate crypto on balance sheets—all aligning closer with traditional finance.
But in this wave of “compliance,” the real winners aren’t the decentralization advocates who’ve preached for a decade, but a small group of players fluent in institutional language and skilled at navigating policy rhythms.
From crypto circles to Wall Street, from wallets to financial statements, the surface path is compliance—but beneath lies a classic case of institutional arbitrage: whoever bridges regulation and capital gains pricing power.
During the 2025 Q2 earnings call, an analyst asked: "How do you view the development opportunities in stablecoins and asset tokenization?"
Novogratz’s answer barely touched products—a seemingly simple yet profoundly institutional judgment: "Assets are migrating, accounts are moving to wallets, and compliance pathways will become the core competitive edge." It was also in this quarter that Galaxy Digital turned profitable.
Galaxy Digital is the hidden intermediary in this power shift. It doesn’t issue tokens or spin narratives, but masters structural design—packaging on-chain assets into PIPE financing, ETF custody, and audit disclosure, using a full suite of compliant syntax to bring new finance ashore legally.
It doesn’t sell services—it sells structure; it doesn’t earn from the market, but from the seams in compliance systems.
This is the true power structure of the crypto industry: while surface-level price movements, protocols, and narratives ebb and flow, the underlying institutional framework has already been firmly controlled by a select few.
An increasing number of crypto projects and traditional firms are achieving “political entry” through Galaxy. But those truly enriched aren’t developers or investors—they’re the ones with dual-language fluency, seamlessly switching between crypto, traditional finance, and power.
When compliance becomes scarce, a new hierarchy quietly forms: the era no longer rewards speed, but returns power to the stewards of rules.
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