After more than a decade, a sleeping Bitcoin wallet since the time of Satoshi Nakamoto has been awakened. This wallet holding 500 BTC with an initial value of $8,425 has now turned into nearly $24 million, all thanks to the skyrocketing price of Bitcoin. The top cryptocurrency is currently $47,185 after topping out at $69,000 in November.
As reported by crypto-tracking service Whale Alert on December 29, a transfer of 165.33 BTC, or $7.78 million, was made from the wallet to an unknown address on Wednesday.
It seems unlikely that someone has waited more than ten years to cash out their Bitcoins. A more plausible explanation for the transaction is that someone accidentally discovered or finally unlocked a dusty crypto wallet.
Last May, $500,000 worth of Bitcoin was transferred from a Bitcoin wallet that was opened in February 2009, just two months after the genesis block was mined. Last May, $500,000 worth of Bitcoin was transferred from a Bitcoin wallet that was opened in February 2009, just two months after the genesis block was mined. This immediately rise speculation that Nakamoto might be cashing out, but this theory was later disproved by blockchain analysts.
As reported by U.Today, a sleeping whale also activated a wallet containing $150 million last November. Estimates show that Nakamoto owns a total of 1,125,150 BTC, with an unspent value of about $53.44 billion at current exchange rates.
According to data from BitInfoCharts, there are hundreds of Bitcoin wallet addresses that have gone dormant over the past decade. The most valuable inactive wallet holds about 80,000 BTC, worth more than $3.7 billion at current market prices, it said.