$5 million worth of Bitcoin just moved for the first time since 2010 🚨 This article is 4 years old...
$5 million worth of Bitcoin just moved for the first time since 2010
1 min read
Updated: Feb. 25, 2021 at 2:51 pm UTC
Cover art/illustration via CryptoSlate. Image includes combined content which may include AI-generated content.
Movements from old Bitcoin wallets are always an exciting development. That said, it wasn’t Satoshi who moved these ones.
Bitcoin moved
Over 100 Bitcoin just moved from an old wallet, on-chain data showed. The coins have been lying in the wallet since 2010 when they were worth a few dollars in all (BTC traded at $0.08 at the time).
100 #bitcoin just moved for the first time in a decade.
That means someone held on to these #bitcoin since 2010, while their value went from literally $0 to $5 million. A legend. pic.twitter.com/ZCRmv7I7fq
— Documenting Bitcoin ? (@DocumentingBTC) February 24, 2021
This is a rare occurrence. To date, only 18 such transactions/wallet movements have been observed from Bitcoin mined in 2010 or earlier.
The stash is worth over $4.8 million at current prices and was last touched in May 2010, or a few months after the launch of Bitcoin. This suggests it was an early Bitcoin developer, user, or enthusiast who knew about the asset and mined it at the time.
On-chain researchers, meanwhile, said that the coins were unlikely to belong to Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. “It is very rare to see pre-GPU-era bitcoins move, it only happened dozens of times in the past few years. And no, it’s probably not Satoshi,” said Antoine Le Calvez, a data engineer at crypto tool CoinMetrics.
Some old coins moved today (100 BTC from June 2010).
It's very rare to see pre-GPU era bitcoins move, it only happened dozens of times in the past few years.
And no, it's probably not Satoshi. pic.twitter.com/0jZXnmWUes
— Antoine Le Calvez (@khannib) February 24, 2021
The relevant transaction address of the BTC shows they were “rewards” from a block mined in 2010. The user mined two blocks, receiving over 100 BTC in turn (block rewards were over 50 BTC each back then; they are only 6.25 BTC now).
For the uninitiated, Bitcoin runs on a proof of work mechanism where “miners” utilize their computing resources to maintain and validate the Bitcoin network and receive “rewards” in return. The 100 BTC stash was gained as a result of this.
Meanwhile, the crypto industry remains neutral on the wallet movement. The last time this happened: traders reacted by selling their BTC and rumors of Satoshi Nakamoto resurfacing did the rounds. But this time was different.
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