Key Points
- An untouched 50 Bitcoin (BTC) stash, valued at $3.3 million, has been moved after nearly 14 years.
- The movement suggests the Bitcoin miner is either consolidating wallets or cashing in.
A quantity of 50 Bitcoin that had been dormant for almost 14 years was transferred earlier today. This indicates that an early Bitcoin miner might be either consolidating their wallets or cashing in.
Bitcoin Mined in 2010
The Bitcoin was mined in April 2010, when the mining reward per block was 50 BTC. Since then, the wallet has seen minimal activity, only receiving a small amount of Bitcoin in 2020, often referred to as “dust”. However, at around 3 a.m. ET today, there was a change when a transaction was made, transferring 17 BTC to one wallet and 33 BTC to another.
Transaction Details
The 17 BTC was sent to a wallet that frequently moves funds out after they have been deposited. This might indicate that it is a recipient wallet for an exchange. The Bitcoin was then combined with funds from other wallets labelled as Coinbase on a blockchain intelligence platform and transferred to another address. This hints that the Bitcoin may have been sent to the exchange. The 33 BTC was moved to a new wallet with no previous activity. It’s feasible that this Bitcoin essentially stayed in the miner’s same wallet under a new address.
This is due to the Bitcoin blockchain’s requirement that all funds in the wallet be moved for each transaction, with any funds not intended to go anywhere new sent back to the same place. This is often done under a new address to make it more difficult to determine which part of the transaction was the actual movement of funds.
This is one of the recent movements of older Bitcoin. On March 23, the fifth richest Bitcoin address at the time transferred Bitcoin worth $6 billion to three new addresses. A week later, a Bitcoin wallet that had been inactive for nearly 12 years transferred its entire 500 BTC, worth just under $35 million, to several new addresses.