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Mysterious Satoshi-era Bitcoin Wallet Suddenly Awakens, Here’s What’s Inside
Yuri Molchan
Inactive Bitcoin Wallet Reactivated After 13 Years; Contains Cryptocurrency Worth Several Millions of Dollars
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Popular cryptocurrency tracker Whale Alert has released news of a Sleeping BTC Whale coming back to life. The last time this wallet showed any activity was 13 years ago.
Sleeping and Active Whales Selling Bitcoin
At the time, in 2011, the shadow of the mysterious creator of Bitcoin Satoshi Kusama still loomed large, as it had only been a year since he disappeared from the radar.
The awakened wallet, whose reappearance was spotted by Whale Alert, contained 33 Bitcoin, equivalent to $2,142,474 at the current BTC exchange rate.
As U.Today previously reported, another sleeping whale transferred a staggering 8,000 BTC to the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance. That stash of BTC was worth just over half a billion US dollars. That wallet resurfaced five and a half years later, purchasing its crypto assets in December 2018.
Recently, however, whale activity has increased overall. On Monday, an anonymous whale transferred 1,800 Bitcoin to Binance, according to analytics account @spotonchain. This happened shortly before BTC plunged from $63,800 to $63,000. Over the past week, this whale has sent 3,481 Bitcoin worth $217 million to Binance.
German and US governments sell BTC and ETH
In recent days, reports have emerged of the German and US governments selling large amounts of the two largest cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum, to unknown cryptocurrency exchanges and wallets.
On Monday, both of these entities transferred large amounts of BTC and ETH. The US government transferred 3,375 ETH, valued at $11.75 million, to a newly created wallet. The German government made transactions for 1,500 BTC (equivalent to $94.7 million). Four hundred BTC of this amount was transferred to three major centralized exchanges: Bitstamp, Kraken, and Coinbase. There are still 44,692 left. This amount of Bitcoin is valued at a whopping $2.81 billion.
The U.S. government has confiscated Ethereum from Estonian cryptocurrency entrepreneurs Potapenko and Turogin, according to Chinese cryptocurrency journalist Colin Wu. These two individuals were recently extradited from Estonia to the United States on charges of cryptocurrency fraud and money laundering.
About the author
Yuri Molchan
Yuri is interested in technology and technical innovations. He has been writing about DLT and cryptocurrencies since 2017. He believes that blockchain and cryptocurrencies have the potential to transform the world in the future in many ways. He has written for several media outlets about cryptocurrencies. His articles have been cited by crypto influencers such as Tyler Winklevoss, John McAfee, CZ Binance, Max Keiser, etc.