Ancient Bitcoin whale makes another sale after the latest Bitcoin (BTC) rally

An ancient whale that mined some of the first Bitcoin (BTC) blocks is moving more coins to exchanges. The coins, back from the early Satoshi Nakamoto era, are valued at $630K. 

An ancient Bitcoin (BTC) whale, with more than $75M in Bitcoin holdings, has moved funds to Kraken again. The whale once again moved $630K worth of BTC to the exchange, just a week after a similar deposit. 

Kraken is already one of the exchanges with strong inflows. In the past day, the market received 6,974.08 BTC, boosting the monthly inflows to 12,835.28 BTC. Kraken is one of the markets most often used for cashing out due to its fiat pairs and the availability of Eurozone-based fiat transfers. 

So far, the whale has moved around $5.74M BTC to Kraken, presumably to cash out. However, exchanges have often been used as mixers before moving to another set of wallets. The recent selling from the whale barely affected the market, where BTC rallied based on the effect of leveraged positions and options. 

The wallet holds another 1,139 BTC, which the spot market could easily absorb. The coins were parked for more than a decade in a different wallet, after the initial rewards were moved and consolidated. 

The whale’s identity is still not discovered, though speculations abound. One of the blockchain investigations ties the whale’s wallet to early Mt. Gox funding, as well as the Ethereum ICO. TruthLabs links the wallet to the ENS name OliverJanssens.eth, a name that expired in May 2023. However, the address on Ethereum is still active and engaging in NFT activities on OpenSea.

The whale’s moves put a horizon on the potential to hold BTC without cashing out even a part of the coins. The whale’s move follows a series of transactions from the end of September when five addresses moved their early 50 BTC rewards and made the coins virtually untraceable through CoinJoin transactions. 

One of the hypotheses for the whale’s actions ties the coins to Hal Finney, the legendary cryptography researcher who received some of the earliest transactions from Satoshi Nakamoto. Finney is known to have mined after the block height of 70, in the very earliest days of BTC. 

The recent moves from early wallets coincide with renewed speculations on the real-life identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. HBO’s production “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery” proposed several candidates for the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, but in the end, the mystery remains unsolved. What is known is that most of the coins on Satoshi’s addresses have never been moved. 

One of the biggest yet unfounded fears is that some early BTC addresses could be compromised, and some of the wallets may be cracked or exploited in some way.

BTC stays in the hands of long-term holders

The supply of BTC in the wallets of long-term holders is near an all-time high. A total of 16,122,747 BTC are considered to be in the hands of long-term holders, based on a cut-off of holding for 155 days or more. The holdings also include most of the coins of miners. 

This metric includes true ancient whales, as well as new buyers who have not traded actively. The recent old wallet’s reawakening caused speculations ranging from insider knowledge to hacked wallets. Yet more and more users are reluctant to move coins and actively trade BTC due to risks of loss. BTC reserves on exchanges are relatively low, though, on the last day, a spike of inflows boosted the available balance. Some exchanges, like Binance, drew in an additional 44,060 BTC in the past month, while markets like Bitfinex and Coinbase Pro saw net withdrawals. 

Long-term holders have also not always realized the best possible price. On average, long-term holders realized a price of 24,931 BTC. However, specific early whales have earnings upward of 10,000%. 

In the past week, some whales capitulated and sold at a loss. However, funds also moved from retail to big holders. In October, BTC regained its strength, rallying to $66,028.66 as the last quarter of the year is still expected to bring a new historical high.