Old Bitcoin Whale Reportedly Wakes Up After 12 Years, Moves $85M

• A wallet, which was originally funded in 2013 when Bitcoin was under $7, has reactivated to move 909 BTC. This is now worth roughly $85 million.
• Long-term holders are moving coins to modern address formats to protect against “exposed public keys”.
• Despite concerns that the whale is attempting to sell off these tokens, institutional inflows are strong, with over $1.5 billion entering Bitcoin products.

An ancient Satoshi-era Bitcoin wallet has just moved for the first time in 13 years.  According to blockchain data, this address held 909.38 BTC since the early days of the network, back when Bitcoin used to be a niche experiment.

However, on Monday, the owner transferred their entire balance (worth about $85 million) to a new address. 

Satoshi-Era Bitcoin Wallet Reactivation and Market Impact

This wallet was reportedly created when Satoshi Nakamoto was still active, and the Bitcoin community was tiny. 

In 2013, when this specific whale first acquired their coins, one Bitcoin cost less than $7. This means that this whale’s $6,400 investment back then has turned into a fortune today. 

For contrast, if that same money had gone into an S&P 500 index fund, it would be worth only around $37,000 today.

Naturally, when these “sleeping giants” wake up, the market tends to tense up. This is because large transfers can indicate that a whale is attempting to sell their holdings and dilute the value of Bitcoin.

However, on-chain data from Arkham Intelligence shows that the funds moved to a fresh, anonymous address rather than an exchange. This means that the owner might just be performing a “security task” by moving the funds to a more secure setup.

Dormant Whale Activity

There have been many rallies over the past 13 years since this wallet was created.

The owner likely sat through multiple market crashes in which prices dropped by 80%. They also likely ignored the massive rallies of 2017 and 2021 and stayed quiet when the FTX exchange collapsed. 

Interestingly, data from the past year shows that more and more old wallets have been coming back to life.

Between 2024 and now, addresses that were dormant for over a decade moved more than $50 billion worth of BTC. Some of these transfers ended up being crypto dumps, but many others were likely just people updating their security. 

Is The Quantum Threat Overblown?

One of the biggest reasons for these whales to move their old coins is related to the rise of quantum computing. 

Security experts have been increasingly warning about “exposed” UTXOs. For context, UXTOs are chunks of Bitcoin sitting in older address formats. 

Back in the early days of Bitcoin, some transactions revealed the “public key” of a wallet directly on the blockchain. This has been safe so far, because today’s computers cannot crack these keys.

However, future quantum machines might be able to derive a private key from a public one in a matter of hours.

This risk is what is driving many “OG” holders to recalculate and patch any loopholes. And even though most cryptographers believe that a real quantum threat is years away, the Bitcoin community is already discussing how to protect the network.

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