Satoshi-Era Bitcoin Worth Millions Just Moved After 14 Years of Inactivity

The old-school Bitcoin holders are at it again. With just days before Bitcoin’s long-awaited halving event, a wallet holding a chunk of the mined cryptocurrency from back when pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto was still active finally moved its stash for the first time after 14 years.

On-chain data shows that the wallet moved 50 BTC—today worth $3.2 million. A large part of it went to a Coinbase address. 

Blockchain sleuths on Twitter (aka X) said that the address was a miner who’d minted the new coins back in 2010, on April 22. Since then, the BTC had sat still in a wallet and not moved—until today. 

The on-chain data shows that the 50 BTC arrived in the wallet as a block reward when Bitcoin was trading for mere pennies or less—meaning that the miner has only made dramatic gains in the time since.

Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Hits All-Time High One Week Before Halving

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty has risen to its highest ever—a little over one week before the long-awaited halving event takes place.  Data from BTC.com shows that Bitcoin difficulty hit 86.39 trillion hashes yesterday. In simple terms, a hash is the process of turning data into code that cannot be deciphered using powerful computers. This proof-of-work mining model is necessary to keep the Bitcoin network running and secure.  Miners—those who mint new coins—generate hashes as part of the process....

Miners are rewarded for minting new coins. This particular address would have received the 50 new coins when Bitcoin was in its earliest days. In 2010, Bitcoin mostly traded for less than $0.10 per coin but hit a high at the end of the year of $0.30, data from Investing.com shows.

CoinMarketCap's earliest data, meanwhile, shows a price above $0.07 in July 2010. It was likely worth less back in April of that year, but even at that July mark, this wallet's holdings would have appreciated by about 87,000,000%.

Bitcoin’s halving is due to take place on Saturday. The quadrennial event will cut Bitcoin miner rewards in half, from 6.25 BTC for each block they process to 3.125 BTC. It’s currently expected to take place on April 20.

This is expected to lead to greater scarcity in the amount of coins on the market. Miners will have to work harder, too, meaning that only the strongest and most efficient operations in the industry will be involved in keeping the network going. 

Bitcoin’s price currently stands at $64,648, according to CoinGecko, after having taken a battering over the weekend. It is now well below its all-time March high of nearly $74,000 per coin. 

Edited by Andrew Hayward