Closely Monitored “Ancient Bitcoin Wallet” Made Its Move After Years

An early-stage Bitcoin (BTC) whale who mined the cryptocurrency in early 2009 transferred some of his assets to crypto exchange Kraken after a nearly decade-long dormancy, according to on-chain data provided by Arkham Intelligence.

This incident comes just a few days after another early BTC whale who was mining Bitcoin during the same period woke up from his 15-year slumber and moved $16 million worth of BTC.

Just over a month after the network launched, a Bitcoin mining whale sent 5 BTC (about $300,000) to Kraken today. Arkham’s data revealed that the whale still has 1,215 BTC, worth about $77 million. The whale’s Bitcoin was mined in February and March of 2009, shortly after Bitcoin’s anonymous founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, launched the network.

“Ancient Bitcoin whale sends BTC to Kraken,” Arkham announced in a post. The whale had previously moved BTC several times between 2011 and 2014, but had been inactive for nearly a decade until recently.

Over the past three weeks, the whale transferred 10 BTC to Kraken in three separate transactions.

This activity is part of a broader trend involving dormant Bitcoin wallets from the so-called “Satoshi Era” from 2009 to 2011, when Nakamoto was still active in the Bitcoin community. Just last week, another wallet from this period moved $16 million worth of BTC for the first time in 15 years. Other notable examples include a July 2023 transfer of $30 million worth of Bitcoin from a wallet that had been inactive for 11 years and a December 2022 transaction in which more than 1,000 BTC were sent to exchanges, presumably to be sold.

*This is not investment advice.