A total of 1,000 Bitcoin were purchased by the two wallets more than ten years ago, at a rate of $134 per Bitcoin.
After a 10-year slumber, two enigmatic Bitcoin wallets with a combined total of 1,000 Bitcoin, or $61 million at today’s exchange rates, have abruptly resurfaced and are transmitting nearly every last satoshi.
According to Blockchain.com’s Bitcoin block explorer, wallet address “16vRq…qjzEa” sent 500 Bitcoin (BTC) in block 843,131 on May 12 at 7:10 pm UTC, and address “1DUJuH…NgfC5” delivered the remaining 500 Bitcoin two blocks later.
On September 12 and 13, 2013, when the price of Bitcoin was $134, each wallet received 500 Bitcoins, according to CoinGecko.
At the current exchange rate, the whole money transferred is valued at $61.2 million, which is 456 times more than their buying price.
Following the transactions, the 500 Bitcoin from “16vRq…qjzEa” have already been sent to numerous wallets by one of the receiving addresses, while the 500 Bitcoin from “1DUJuH…NgfC5” is still in the possession of the recipient.
Blockchain analytics company Lookin Chain paired the two transactions together because of how close the outgoing and inward transfers were to one another. This led observers to assume that the two wallets belonged to the same individual or organization.
According to BitInfoCharts, the two addresses were tied for the 4,353th-largest Bitcoin whales before the transfers.
A Bitcoin wallet from the time of Satoshi Nakamoto moved 687 Bitcoin, or $43.9 million, to two different addresses less than a week ago.
A new investigation by Chainalysis and Fortune found that roughly 1.8 million Bitcoin addresses had lain dormant for more than a decade, while at least one of these early-day Bitcoin wallets tends to resurrect every month.
According to Fortune, these wallets—aside from Nakamoto’s wallet—contain roughly $121 billion in Bitcoin.
Although the exact amount lost is unknown, the 1.8 million addresses represent 8.5% of the 21 million Bitcoins that will ever be created.
People frequently conjecture that inactive wallets might be waking up to sell Bitcoin at the right moment. Others propose that the money might be moved to a new address, maybe managed by a noncustodial wallet service provider that offers more security.
According to CoinGecko, the price of Bitcoin is at $61,450, up 130% in the last 12 months.