On July 2, 33.99 BTC, inactive since June 2011, were moved. The unknown owner distributed assets worth over $2.1 million between two addresses.
? A dormant address containing 33 #BTC (2,142,474 USD) has just been activated after 13.0 years!https://t.co/3W6CV0avC8
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) July 2, 2024
The transfers amounted to 30.66 BTC and 3.33 BTC with fees of $1.13 and $0.94 respectively.
The bitcoins, dormant for 13 years, are part of a 50 BTC reward received by a miner for a block on July 16, 2010. Just 10 days later, the assets were split between two new wallets: 44 BTC and 6 BTC.
At that time, the first cryptocurrency was valued significantly below $1. On May 22, 2010, programmer Laszlo Hanyecz purchased two Papa John’s pizzas for 10,000 BTC (at $0.0025 per coin). This is considered the first real-world purchase with digital gold and is annually celebrated by the community as Bitcoin Pizza Day.
On June 18, 2011, the 44 BTC were again split into two wallets, similar to the previous transfer: 33.99 BTC and 10 BTC.
In 2020, the dormant address holding the first sum received four transactions of 0.00000547 BTC from August to September. This was likely due to a series of “dusting attacks,” as reported by users.
By sending the smallest possible transactions, attackers attempt to deanonymize users by analyzing metadata, studying their financial flows and habits for potential phishing.
According to an April report by Chainalysis and Fortune, 1.75 million bitcoin wallets have been inactive for over 10 years. They hold 1,798,681 BTC (~$121 billion at the time of the report), accounting for 8.5% of the total supply.
This count excludes about 30,000 addresses associated with the creator of the first cryptocurrency, Satoshi Nakamoto.
Thus, any movement of coins from the early era attracts community attention. In May, an unknown whale moved 687.33 BTC ($43.94 million at the time of the transaction) for the first time since 2014, while another user moved 1,000 BTC (~$61 million), dormant for the same period.
In June, a miner transferred 50 BTC to Binance, received for a block mined on July 14, 2010.