While an address holding $50 million worth of Bitcoin had been dormant since 2012, movements took place on Thursday. We take stock of the situation.
This Bitcoin (BTC) whale wakes up after 13 years of sleep
After 13 years of sleep, a Bitcoin (BTC) address holding the equivalent of $50 million has woken up. Dormant since November 26, 2012, the wallet made a transaction of 137.03 bitcoins on Thursday afternoon. Interestingly, this is the exact amount of the last incoming transaction to the address, which was worth less than $1,700 at the time, compared to more than $15.6 million today:
In this transaction, 4.9 BTC were sent to the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange, while the remaining 132 were redirected to another address where they are still present at the time of writing.
The 5 BTC were then moved to another address, and subsequent transactions do not allow us to determine whether the other bitcoins that were moved at the same time belong to the whale, or whether they are batch transactions by Kraken involving other customers:
As for the reasons behind these movements, there could be a number of factors at play. Such episodes, in which dormant BTC wake up after long periods of inactivity, are not uncommon, and the motivations are varied. One reason could be the holder’s need to move their assets to wallets that are more secure than what was available 13 years ago.
Of course, the desire to take profits or transfer funds are also possibilities to explore.
The address behind these movements still holds nearly 308 bitcoins, valued at $35.38 million.
Meanwhile, the price of BTC is $114,900, up 0.8% over the last 24 hours.
