$ 23.7 million Bitcoin reserve moved for the first time in more than a decade
A diamond-handed Bitcoin holder has just moved his coins from their wallet for the first time since 2011, the year Satoshi Nakamoto sent his last known email and disappeared from the web, according to Whale Alert data.
The initial investment of $ 8,425 turned into $ 23.7 million, with Bitcoin registering huge gains over the past decade.
The top cryptocurrency is currently $47,247 after topping out at $69,000 on Nov. 10.
As impressive as it may be, it is unlikely that anyone would have waited more than ten years to cash out their Bitcoin stash. A more likely explanation for the transaction is that someone accidentally discovered or ultimately unlocked a dusty crypto wallet.
Last May, $500,000 worth of Bitcoin was moved from a Bitcoin wallet that was opened all the way back in February 2009, just two months after the genesis block was mined. This immediately led to speculation that Satoshi started cashing out his coins, but the theory was later refuted by blockchain analysts.
As reported by U.Today, a sleeping whale also activated a wallet containing $ 150 million in November.
Centralized ownership
According to a recent study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research, just 0.01% of the top Bitcoin addresses control nearly a third of the total supply.
While the balances of cryptocurrency exchanges must also be taken into account, Bitcoin ownership is still extremely centralized due to early adopters.
Of course, not everyone who got into Bitcoin during its first years turned into a whale. Last December, Martti “Sirius” Malmi, Satoshi’s first partner, revealed that he had missed out on a billion-dollar fortune by selling his Bitcoin holdings early.
