An Ancient Bitcoin Whale Just Moved $5 Million in BTC

A hundred Bitcoin untouched for over a decade has just moved. If a long-time HODLer sold that Bitcoin today, they’d make $5 million. Not a bad investment, considering that Bitcoin was worth a dollar in 2010. 

The coins, created in June 2010, moved today at 3:15 pm UTC in two transactions to separate wallets. It’s unclear what’s happened to them since. 

The move was picked up by Antoine Le Calvez, the self-described “Indiana Jones of the cryptosphere” who tweeted about the move today. 

Large moves like this spark interest because some people think that anyone who was into Bitcoin that early on knew its pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Nakamoto’s identity remains a mystery to this day. 

Nakamoto created Bitcoin in late 2008, just as the financial crash took hold. In fact, signed to Bitcoin’s genesis block—the first Bitcoin block—is  a reference to a message issued by the newswire Reuters: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks."

Resurgences of old wallets are also noteworthy because, like our anonymous whale, these wallets hold a lot of money. That means these old traders, many of whom invested mere pennies in the early 2010s, can exert a significant influence over the market. 

Market analysis firm Glassnode predicted in December 2020 that about 3 million Bitcoin is “lost forever.” That’s about $147 billion. But if that Bitcoin should suddenly wake up, that would send shockwaves through a market that had already priced in its loss. 

About 745 Bitcoin mined since July 2010 has so far this year. Le Calvez said that’s roughly about the time when Bitcoin GPU miners started to become widespread. On Sunday, old whales moved 5 Bitcoin, and on February 9 moved another 30 BTC. 

“And no, it's probably not Satoshi,” said Le Calvez.