Source: Pixabay / Michael Wuensch
Nearly 1000 Bitcoin (BTC) worth over $43 million were moved earlier this week after more than 13 years of dormancy, on-chain analysis shows.
In a report shared on Wednesday, blockchain analytics platform CryptoQuant noted that a Bitcoin address received 999 BTC in a single transaction on December 4.
The transaction included inputs from twenty different addresses that each sent 50 BTC. While the receiving address was newly generated, the sent BTC was still freshly mined, originating from block rewards between August and November 2010.
That was before Satoshi Nakamoto – Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator – ceased public communications via email and Bitcoin talk forums. Before 2012, every Bitcoin block included at least 50 BTC in rewards for miners.
The moved coins were eventually consolidated in a separate address that now contains 1,028 BTC ($44.6 million). “The 1K mined Bitcoin was worth a total of $100 at the time of mining,” noted CryptoQuant.
The firm speculates that the original owner of the coins was a Bitcoin pioneer who got his coins by mining during the network’s early days. It also suspects that the miner has now sold those coins due to the transaction patterns of the receiving address.
“There is a possibility that the 1K Bitcoin were sent into an OTC or custodian service,” the company added. OTC, or over-the-counter trading, is a private method for institutions to buy or liquidate large amounts of BTC without immediately impacting its market price substantially.
When Old Bitcoin Moves
This isn’t the first time that Satoshi-era Bitcoin has moved this year: in July, a wallet that spent 11 years inactive sent 1,037 BTC to a new address. Those coins were first acquired in April of 2012 and were each worth just $5.37 at the time.
In August, another wallet moved 1005 BTC after 12.8 years in slumber.
Coins from the Satoshi era are typically presumed to be lost by their former owners, since most investors from that era were unlikely to resist selling during Bitcoin’s volatile price history.
Blockchain data from Glassnode suggests that BTC may be in for strong future gains since most long-term holders (155 days+) still appear unwilling to relinquish their coins at current prices.
However, the price remains substantially above the True Market Mean Price – the level at which the average investor acquired his coins – at roughly $31,500.
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