Is Satoshi cashing out? 640 nine-year-old Bitcoin on the move
- After remaining dormant for over nine years, a Satoshi-era wallet has been activated.
- The owner initiated a transfer of 640 BTC to an unidentified wallet on the network.
- Idle addresses hold over nine percent of the circulating supply.
A large portion of Satoshi-era coins that were acquired at an average price of $5.27 is on the move, hinting that the mysterious Bitcoin creator who disappeared from the community in 2011 is cashing out.
Sleeping Bitcoin wallets are waking up
According to the most accurate estimate, Satoshi Nakamoto owns 1,125,150 BTC with an estimated unspent value of at least $37.24 billion. Bitcoin tokens mined before Satoshi went completely anonymous are known within the cryptocurrency community as Satoshi-era Bitcoins.
It is likely that wallets created in this era belong to Satoshi, including the one that moved 640 Bitcoin a few hours ago.
Crypto traders are speculating about the next steps that the wallet owner may take with these old BTC tokens. What is known for a fact is that the receiving wallet has no previous transaction history, which makes it difficult to ascertain what is next. Meanwhile, the sending address has received small mining rewards in the past, and there has been no other activity since 2012.
As the price of Bitcoin is around $33,000, the 640 BTC amounts to $21.18 million.
Similar incidents of old BTC tokens on the move have been reported in February 2021. Two wallets moved 100 BTC out of dormancy when Bitcoin was trading around the $51,000 mark. Half of these coins are thought to have landed in German exchange Bitcoin.de and the remaining 50 are sitting in a newly created wallet address.
Usually, when a large number of old BTC are moved throughout the blockchain, crypto enthusiasts are cautious about Bitcoin price action. The likelihood that these coins hit exchanges increases, like they did in February, putting downward pressure on the flagship cryptocurrency.
An increase in the number of BTC available on exchanges means there is more of it available to traders to sell. Since the demand on crypto exchanges does not always increase proportionately with the supply, the chances of a sell-off increase followed by a drop in Bitcoin price.
Author
Ekta Mourya
FXStreet
Ekta Mourya has extensive experience in fundamental and on-chain analysis, particularly focused on impact of macroeconomics and central bank policies on cryptocurrencies.
