On Friday, Galaxy Digital confirmed its involvement in the sale of 80,000 bitcoins. What do you need to know about this historic transaction worth over $9 billion?
Galaxy Digital sold 80,000 bitcoins
This month, significant Bitcoin movements raised questions among the community, which gave rise to various speculations, including a potential security breach. In total, 80,000 BTC woke up for the first time since 2011, worth nearly $9.4 billion at the time of writing.
Over the course of several days, wallets linked to Galaxy Digital were identified, and yesterday we were able to revisit suspicions surrounding a possible sale of these assets.
Since then, the news has been made official, with Galaxy Digital confirming that it acted as an intermediary in what is now one of the largest transactions in the history of Bitcoin (BTC):
Galaxy has completed the sale of over 80,000 bitcoins — valued at over $9 billion at current market prices — for a Satoshi-era investor. This is one of the first and largest exits from the digital asset market. This transaction was part of the investor’s broader estate planning strategy.
In total, this amount represents 0.4% of all existing bitcoins, and certain measures are therefore necessary to prevent the price of BTC from falling. To allow the market to absorb this selling pressure, the funds have been spread across various platforms such as OKX and Binance, although Galaxy Digital does not specify whether some bitcoins may also have been sold over the counter.
To illustrate the importance of this diversification, we note, for example, that on Binance, $11.4 million in sales would cause the BTC/FDUSD pair to fall, while $22.86 million would be needed for the BTC/USDT pair:
Since the first significant movements in this case were identified, BTC has still climbed 7%. Nevertheless, the 4.7% correction we have seen since the all-time high (ATH) of $123,000 on July 14 can be partly explained by this massive sale. Despite everything, it should be noted that after a latent fall below $115,000 on Friday, the price of BTC has since recovered somewhat and stands at $117,400 at the time of writing, up 1.7% over 24 hours:
While Galaxy Digital claims that this sale is part of an estate settlement, it should be noted that according to Ki Young Ju, founder and CEO of CryptoQuant, these bitcoins are linked to MyBitcoin, a wallet that ceased operations in 2011:
The wallets had been inactive since April 2011, before MyBitcoin collapsed following a hack in July. They probably belong to the hacker or anonymous founder known as Tom Williams.
While the entrepreneur believes that Galaxy Digital may not have done all the necessary research, we will need to remain alert for any new clues.
