Bitcoin Whale Awakens After 12 Years to Move $44 Million in BTC

In brief

An old address holding 400 Bitcoin worth over $44 million has moved their “digital gold.”
The coins had sat in the digital wallet since November 2013. Bitcoin is up 16,000% since then.
A growing number of “Satoshi-era” investors have moved their Bitcoin in recent months with BTC steadily above $100K.

Another long-term Bitcoin investor is back in action and making moves.

Data from Arkham Intelligence shows that an address holding over $44 million in digital coins made a transaction after 12 years of dormancy.

Sunday was the first time the 400 Bitcoin had been touched since they arrived in the digital wallet in November 2013— just four years after the oldest blockchain came to life.

Back then, the price of Bitcoin stood at around $720, according to CoinGecko. It’s now trading for over $114,000—a nearly 16,000% rise. As is often the case, it’s unclear who owns the wallet, as such personally identifying information isn’t included on the blockchain.

Back in 2013, the lowest price the oldest cryptocurrency touched was a mere $13. It soared to over $1,132 by the end of the year.

Old addresses holding such large amounts of Bitcoin likely belong to miners—people or companies—who started minting new coins during the digital asset’s early years.

Back then, new coins could be produced using desktop computers. But now in the increasingly industrialized Bitcoin mining world, companies use warehouses full of computers to process transactions on the crypto network.

A number of big, long-term Bitcoin holders—known as “whales”—have started moving coins this year as the cryptocurrency dubbed “digital gold” trades comfortably above $100,000. Such moves have, in the past, spooked markets, as traders largely interpret such reactivations of old wallets as an intention to sell off the stash.

At the moment, market sentiment on Bitcoin has once again flipped bullish, with users on Myriad—a prediction market developed by Decrypt‘s parent company Dastan—now favoring a move to $125K over a drop to $105K at nearly 58%. Those odds had dropped as low as 29% just yesterday.

Back in July, a whale sold more than 80,000 Bitcoin—over $9 billion at the time—after holding the coins for 14 years. Analysts were initially puzzled, but institutional crypto firm Galaxy later revealed it had executed the sale for the unidentified Satoshi-era investor.