The bitcoin (BTC) whale responsible for moving more than 80,000 BTC (worth over $8.6 billion) today may have mined the coins themselves way back in 2011, according to Coinbase’s Conor Grogan.
As reported by Lookonchain, the holder’s BTC lay dormant for 14 years, but all eight of their wallets, each containing 10,000 BTC, have now been emptied.
BTC is worth $107,745 today but was valued at just $0.78 on April 3, 2011, when the whale first received its BTC. Their stash of 80,000 BTC would have been worth roughly $62,400 at the time, and has increased by almost 140,000% since then.
The funds have reportedly not moved to any crypto exchange addresses, and so it’s unclear if the holder plans to sell the BTC or not.
Others are also unsure why the whale would need to split up the BTC holdings into eight separate addresses. This is sometimes done to increase security and can help avoid the risk of losing all your holdings in a single hack targeting one wallet.
