Two old Bitcoin addresses suddenly came alive. Both had been silent since September 2010. On Friday, November 13, each moved 50 BTC, about $6.9 million together.
What exactly happened
Whale Alert flagged the first transfer at 4:08 a.m. UTC. An address that had not spent its mining reward since September 2010 sent out 50 BTC. A little over two minutes later, a second long-dormant wallet did the same.
The coins were born in blocks mined on September 8 and 19, 2010. Back then one bitcoin cost about six cents, so a reward was worth roughly three dollars. According to Decrypt, at a price near $68,800 their value grew almost 1.15 million times.
Where the coins went
Both moves follow nearly the same pattern. The first address sent about 49.99 BTC to one new address and 0.01 BTC to another. The second sent almost 49 BTC to one and about 1 BTC to another. Each transaction paid 1,110 satoshis in fees, around 75 cents.
A check at 14:00 UTC showed the new addresses had not sent anything further. Nobody has spotted a sale yet.
A sale or just a reshuffle
This is where the guessing starts. The chain shows where the money went, but not who controls it. It could be a private trade, an OTC sale or a plain move to a safer wallet.
Decrypt also reminds readers that the $3 figure for 2010 is only an estimate. There was barely a market: Mt. Gox opened only in July of that year, and its first trade was at $0.04951. And 1.15 million times is a paper gain, not earned cash. Until the owner sells, the profit is unrealized.
Not the first case this year
Old wallets keep waking up. Galaxy Research showed back in August that coins untouched for over ten years were moving at an unusually high pace. In ten days, six wallets from 2011, 2012 and 2014 moved 553.59 BTC together, over $40 million at the time.
- Some owners just upgrade their wallet.
- Others move to a professional custodian.
- Some really do sell.
Separately, CoinDesk wrote about a Satoshi-era wallet that moved 75 BTC it had held since 2011. Who is behind that one is unknown too.
What to take from it
For the price these 100 BTC change almost nothing, since on a market that liquidates billions of dollars in positions in a day this is a crumb. But every such move reminds us that the old layer of Bitcoin is not exhausted. If these coins do go up for sale, buyers will want to exchange bitcoin for dollars in a few clicks, and the rate will show the reaction fast. For now we wait to see whether they move again from the new addresses.
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