In brief
- An ancient whale moved 306 Bitcoin.
- When it was first funded, Bitcoin traded around $75.
- The asset’s latest rally has awoken some long-term holders.
A wallet that held more than 300 Bitcoin for over a decade was emptied on Friday as the asset’s price fell to a three-week low, blockchain data shows.
The wallet, which starts with “1c5Cb,” was first funded via a CoinJoin address in 2013, when the leading cryptocurrency by market cap changed hands around $75, according to crypto market data provider CoinMarketCap and analytics platform Arkham Intelligence.
Back then, Bitcoin was viewed as a financial curio and primarily used to purchase drugs on the darknet market Silk Road. The asset’s price has increased 152,300% since the wallet was first funded, yielding a $34.8 million sum, with Bitcoin recently hovering below $114,000.
Whoever acquired the Bitcoin is up massively on paper, but the stash is peanuts compared to some ancient Bitcoin awoken by the recent rally. Two weeks ago, a once-dormant address moved $4.7 billion to crypto exchange Galaxy Digital. After another round of transfers, the firm said it had sold 80,000 Bitcoin worth $9 billion on behalf of a client.
A smaller yet similar tranche of 50 Bitcoin worth $5 million was activated in April. Those funds were obtained in 2010, when the original cryptocurrency cost around $0.10.
Bitcoin could be caught up in a months-long correction phase as long-term holders cash in, on-chain data firm CryptoQuant warned this week. It said the market is absorbing major selling from whales, a term reserved for large holders, for the third time since 2024.
The Bitcoin moved on Friday did not appear to be heading to an exchange. The Bitcoin was split between two wallets, which held 106 Bitcoin and 200 Bitcoin, respectively.
CoinJoin addresses are used to enhance the privacy of Bitcoin transactions by combining multiple users’ Bitcoin into a single transaction. That it makes it harder for people to track the flow of transactions by obfuscating their origins and destinations.
The wallet did not receive the Bitcoin from mining. Experts have identified early Bitcoin miners as likely targets for quantum computers, when they become strong enough to crack Bitcoin’s encryption for early wallet-address types.
Quantum-vulnerable coins include those belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator. As the asset’s largest whale, they are believed to own 1.1 million Bitcoin, a sum worth $125 billion at current prices.
Daily Debrief Newsletter
Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
in well organized HTML format with all tags properly closed. Create appropriate headings and subheadings to organize the content. Ensure the rewritten content is approximately 1500 words. Do not include the title and images. please do not add any introductory text in start and any Note in the end explaining about what you have done or how you done it .i am directly publishing the output as article so please only give me rewritten content. At the end of the content, include a “Conclusion” section and a well-formatted “FAQs” section.
