Satoshi-Era Bitcoin (BTC) Wallets Come Back to Life En Masse, Big Sell-off Coming?
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Popular crypto tracking service Whale Alert has noticed that another crypto wallet that had been dormant for many years has come back to life. Earlier today, it was an ancient Ethereum wallet.
Now, a Bitcoin address has been reactivated where BTC was last moved when Satoshi Nakamoto was still with the crypto community.
Ancient whale moved $27.4 million into Bitcoin
According to Whale Alert, less than an hour ago, a dormant address woke up after 12 years and moved 1,000 Bitcoins worth $27,456,958 USD at the current BTC/USD exchange rate.
Twelve years ago was the year 2011 — that was a year after the mysterious creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, left his brainchild in the hands of the early Bitcoin community, such as Gavin Wood, Hal Finney and others.
💤 💤 💤 A dormant address containing 1,000 #BTC (27,456,958 USD) has just been activated after 12.0 years!https://t.co/lHrgCNWpbY
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) April 24, 2023
Recently, it became known that the iOS code for Macs contains the Bitcoin whitepaper. This sparked massive speculation about whether Steve Jobs, the tech visionary and co-founder of Apple, could be Satoshi Nakamoto. Popular crypto YouTuber Lark Davis pointed out that Nakamoto disappeared in late 2010 and Jobs passed away in 2011.
Many, however, suggested as part of this theory that it was rather the other Apple founder Steve Wozniak who could have been the real Satoshi.
Dormant BTC and ETH wallets awakening one after another
As reported by U.Today recently, manifold ancient crypto addresses holding Bitcoin and Ethereum have been reactivated and started moving their crypto. Last week, two BTC wallets awakened after staying inactive for 10 and 9.3 years. They shifted 1,128 BTC and 6,078 BTC, respectively.
Several Ethereum whales inactive since the ETH ICO in 2014 have also awakened recently. One of them shifted 1 ETH, but the wallet still contains 2,365 ETH evaluated at $4,377,447 USD.
Many Twitter users have been joking in the comments to these tweets about ancient crypto wallets that their owners have probably just managed to finally locate their keys after so many years.
All these ancient whales who have been reactivating their wallets seem mostly to be selling their crypto. However, now it does not seem to be the best time for that — Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $69,000 in November 2021, currently trading at $27,444 — that is, down 60.09% from its historic peak. Ethereum reached its ATH of $4,891 at about the same time, now changing hands below $2,000, down 62.21% from that historic level.