Two mysterious Bitcoin wallets, holding a total of 1,000 Bitcoins valued at $61 million at current prices, suddenly woke up after a 10-year hiatus and are transferring nearly all their assets to different wallets. According to the Bitcoin block on Blockchain, the wallet address 16vRq…qjzEa transferred 500 Bitcoins on May 12th in block 843,131, while the other 500 Bitcoins were sent two blocks later to address 1DUJuH…NgfC5.
Notable Awakening for Bitcoin
According to CoinGecko data, on September 12 and 13, 2013, the price of Bitcoin was $134, and each wallet received 500 Bitcoins. The total amount transferred is now worth 456 times more than the purchase price of $61.2 million at current prices. Since the transfers, one of the recipient addresses from 16vRq…qjzEa has sent 500 Bitcoins to numerous wallets.
The proximity of the inbound and outbound transfers caused the blockchain data analysis platform Lookonchain to match the two transactions; observers believe the two wallets belong to the same person or organization. According to BitInfoCharts, before the transfers, both addresses were the 4,353rd largest Bitcoin whales.
Bitcoin Whales and the Trading Process
Less than a week ago, a Bitcoin wallet from the Satoshi Nakamoto era transferred 687 Bitcoins worth $43.9 million to two separate addresses. Although at least one of these early Bitcoin wallets tends to wake up every month, according to a recent analysis by Chainalytics and Fortune, there are about 1.8 million Bitcoin addresses that have been inactive for over a decade.
Fortune reported that these wallets, excluding Nakamoto’s, hold about $121 billion worth of Bitcoin. It is impossible to know how much of this has been lost, but the 1.8 million addresses make up 8.5% of the total 21 million Bitcoins that will ever exist.
While people often suggest that dormant wallets might wake up at an opportune time to sell Bitcoin, others propose that it could be to transfer funds to a different address, possibly under a more secure off-storage wallet service provider. According to CoinGecko, Bitcoin is currently priced at $61,450, showing a 130% increase over the last 12 months.
