Satoshi-Era Bitcoin Whale Awakens, Moves $48M in Vintage BTC

Key Takeaways

• Bitcoin saw 600 BTC from 2010 swept into 12 new wallets on Sept. 5, putting $47.84 million in rare Satoshi-era coins back in play.
• Arkham tagged the 12 original wallets as a miner, tying the stash to Bitcoin’s early CPU-mining days.
• The 600 BTC sweep clocked a 60/100 privacy score, while where the coins head next is anyone’s guess.

2010 Bitcoin Miner Suddenly Moves 600 BTC

Earlier on Saturday, Bitcoin.com News reported that September had logged 626.74 BTC so far. That figure didn’t stick around for long, though, as things took a significant turn at block height 965639. At that time, 12 legacy Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK) addresses moved a total of 600 BTC from wallets created long ago in 2010. The movement of the long-dormant bitcoin didn’t go unnoticed, with both btcparser.com and Whale Alert picking up on the transfers on their feeds.

Here’s the thing: 2010-era bitcoin spends are pretty rare when it comes to dormant coins suddenly moving. Seeing a whole string of them like this, on the other hand, is even more unusual. Out of the massive 6,427.59 vintage BTC shifted last month, only two of them were from wallets created in 2010. This specific batch was a miner as the transfers were all coinbase transactions mined between March 2, 3, 4, and 5.