Out of the blue on Wednesday, a Bitcoin whale that had been dormant since 2010 came to life, moving long-dormant coins to five new addresses in a few transactions.
BTC was mined just a year after Bitcoin was created, and the miner has been holding on to his supply all this time.
Dormant Transfers $14M Worth of BTC After 11 Years
According to data collected by LookOnChain, one of the cryptocurrency's first miners transferred 250 bitcoins today after storing the assets untouched for 11 years.
The user diligently accumulated 250 BTC by mining through five wallets in 2010. The coins, worth approximately $13.95 million, were transferred to five wallet addresses as of August 7.
As expected, the wider crypto community has also noted BTC's awakening, with some speculating that Bitcoin's mysterious inventor Satoshi Nakamoto has returned.
Satoshi alive
— August 7, 2024
However, it is entirely possible that some experienced miner simply found a hard drive dating back to 2010 and decided to move their old block rewards or liquidate them.
A closer look at the blockchain data shows that the miner's initial mining reward of 250 BTC was valued at just $28,080 when it was mined in May 2013. However, it has since grown to a whopping $14,022,065 as of the transfer date, representing a profit of over $13.9 million.
As previously reported by ZyCrypto, another dormant BTC wallet containing 26 BTC recently moved its cache to a new address. The BTC was acquired in 2012 at an estimated value of $301, while its total value at the time of the move last month was about $1.81 million.
"Something is happening"
The latest transfer coincided with CryptoQuant founder and CEO Ki Young Joo's observation that about $22.8 billion, or 404,448 BTC, had been transferred to "constant holders' addresses" over the past 30 days, "and that's clearly an accumulation."
"I'm pretty sure there's something going on behind the scenes," Young Joo said on X.
Young Ju’s comments suggest that the movement of these long-dormant coins may be part of a larger trend of Bitcoin accumulation. The movement of over 400,000 BTC into cold storage wallets signals bullish sentiment among investors.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $57,324 as the flagship cryptocurrency tries to recover from Monday's mega sell-off.
