Bitcoin, which has been marching higher over the last four days, has crashed under $9,500—suddenly losing almost $1000 per bitcoin off Tuesday’s highs in less than 24 hours. The latest sudden sell-off, which sent the wider cryptocurrency market lower, was caused by a so-called bitcoin whale transferring a large amount of bitcoins that was mined a decade ago.
??? 40 #BTC (391,055 USD) transferred from possible #Satoshi owned wallet (dormant since 2009) to unknown wallet
ℹ️ The coins in this transaction were mined in the first month of Bitcoin's existence. Tx: https://t.co/hxDJGGtfF0 — Whale Alert (@whale_alert) May 20, 2020
Nearly six hours ago, a large bitcoin holder moved some 50 Bitcoin bitcoin, worth more than $500,000 from an off-exchange wallet that has been inactive for 11 years. The transfer was made in one transaction, but the coins were sent split up into two addresses, as reported by a bitcoin and cryptocurrency whale tracking Twitter bot.
The incident not only hit the market due to the influx of supply, but also led to speculations that the old wallet belongs to Satoshi Nakamoto who have left the bulk of his coins unmoved since day one.
Evidence shows that the bulk of bitcoins transferred today was mined in February 2009. At the time, the reward per block was 50 BTC.
50 BTC from Feb 2009 is moving.
That's just one month after first bitcoin block was mined. There is not a lot of people who can do this, perhaps close associates of Satoshi. My question is why, not who, is sending 50 BTC for the first time in more than 10 years. — Joseph Young (@iamjosephyoung) May 20, 2020
Until now, it’s not clear who is the owner of this mysterious wallet and why he had no desire to touch his cryptocurrency stash. Based on what little is known so far, it’s hard to imagine why he developed a sudden urge for cashing in. Whatever his aspirations, as a guy that seemingly owns cheaply mined blocks since the network's earliest days, the last thing he needs is a bitcoin glut.
The bitcoin price, down nearly 3 percent over the last 24 hour trading period, is still up around double compared to the year ago when it began a recovery attempt following a terrible 2018 that saw all Cryptocurrencies lose around 80 percent of their value.
