Bitcoin Forum

I came across a topic asking if people can really change their name to Bitcoin for 200btc here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5433403.0)
and my answer was yes speaking for myself.
That very topic reminded me of an issue my brother had as he was scammed of $2000 worth of BTC but we had to track the transaction using the transaction ID on Blockchain and when tracked, we finally found the coin in a wallet containing over $600m(36754.6) worth of Bitcoin after several transactional movement.

My questions
~Are there private individuals who own and posses such amount of Bitcoin?
~Why will one posses such amount as an Individual?
~Are there any consequences to this?
https://i.imgur.com/UvUJkND.jpg

As you can see on the image, the address are owned by Binance, it might be the fourth of Binance's hot wallet.

Anyway if the scammer send the coin to Binance, you could get back your brother's money since Binance can freeze the coins, just not to be late until the scammer already convert the coins to fiat.

But I wouldn't deny if there's a person who have such huge Bitcoin because a billionaire can buy Bitcoin higher than 50,000 BTC or higher at this current rate. There's no consequences if a whale hold a lot portion of Bitcoin, Bitcoin wouldn't be centralized and get manipulated by whale. Actually if a whale is keep buying Bitcoin, it will increase the Bitcoin price since demand is higher than the supply.

Owners maybe of crypto exchanges, or gambling sites.


Not sure what you mean by this,

You can see the Top 100 richest bitcoin addresses. (https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html)


We don't have names associated to bitcoin addresses, except a few again, including exchanges. So there is no consequences, the only thing is that since it is in a public ledger, anyone can track the movement, dates when it was move, where it move, fees associated with it.

Addresses with balance > 100 or > 1000 BTC
https://www.lookintobitcoin.com/charts/wallets-greater-than-100-btc/
https://www.lookintobitcoin.com/charts/wallets-greater-than-1000-btc/

Nowadays it is crazy to have the number of bitcoins but in the past, it was not difficult. Miners could mine bitcoins easily in the past, low difficulty, less competitors and block rewards were high too.

Initially, block reward is 50 BTC each block that halved to 25 BTC, 12.5 BTC and 6.25 BTC after the third halving in 2020. With 50 BTC for one block, you can have 5,000 BTC from mining only 100 Bitcoin blocks.

Controlled supply (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply)

Miners did not mine bitcoin with ASICs in the past, they started with CPU, laptop, GPU, FPGA and ASIC.

Bitcoin Mining History. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5432341.msg61516871#msg61516871)

Almost all the time whenever you find a bitcoin address containing a very large amount of bitcoin (like the one in your screenshot) it belongs to a centralized service that is holding other people's bitcoins (in this case a centralized exchange called Binance).

But it is not unheard of for an individual to own that much bitcoin either, remember that bitcoin price was not always this high and will not remain in this level forever. As it keeps rising, a small amount today would look like a lot in the future. For example the 50BTC block reward was once worth barely $0.5. Many individuals have bought or mined bitcoin those days.

There is no "consequence" of having money! Why would there be? There can only be consequence if the owner advertises it and puts themselves at risk of theft or other types of attacks/harm.

Thank you so much for your response and positive response but how can we get binance to track and block the Bitcoin because my brother is really in a big mess and that $2000 in my local currency is a huge sum of money and he only helped to trade so he could get some percentage off the trade but everything backfired and now it's a totally different story all together.
I will be glad if you or anyone can help me get to block this coins as there are really alot going on here and seeing my brother in this state really bitters my heart.

Please all help will be greatly appreciated thanks

Clearly, the wallet that contained the $600 million worth of Bitcoin wasn't the scammer's wallet. It's one of Binance's wallets. And from this information, we can tell that the scammer is not really a wise scammer because he/she is using not only a centralized exchange but one which also requires KYC from all its users. Having said this, your brother should report this to Binance, along with all the evidences. This dumb scammer will not only lose his/her money, his/her identity would also be known.

Anyway, I'm not sure if there is an individual who owns 36,754.6BTC, but it is possible. Why will anybody possess such a huge amount? Well, it's probably the same reason that all of us want to have as much Bitcoin as possible, although I think such individual should be spreading his/her coins in different addresses. As to the consequences, I guess it's good because he/she doesn't have to be working anymore knowing that he/she's got $600 million already. He/she also won't have to stack more coins anymore because he/she's already got so many already. But he/she could also be targeted by scammers and robbers for owning so much.

Yes, it is possible for private individuals to own large amounts of Bitcoin. There are many possible reasons why someone might possess such a large amount of Bitcoin, including:

They may have purchased the Bitcoin when it was less valuable and held onto it as it appreciated in value.
They may have earned the Bitcoin through mining or other means.
They may have received the Bitcoin as payment for goods or services.
There are no inherent consequences to owning a large amount of Bitcoin. However, it is important to note that Bitcoin, like any other asset, is subject to market fluctuations and may lose value. Additionally, some countries have stricter regulations on the ownership and use of Bitcoin, and individuals may be required to report their holdings or pay taxes on their Bitcoin-related income.

I love all these stories of friends and brothers and colleagues getting scammed for thousands of dollars and/or parting way with thousands. All this within a network of people willing to change their name for a fistful of satoshi.

If these stories were true, then truly we are surrounded by people who are wealthy enough not to use Bitcoin properly.

They have that number of bitcoins first because they can afford to own it, and they do it because they see a future in it.

They can actually loose it all if things go sideways. Although I am certain that whales have other investments that are sustaining them in this bear season, it will hurt them to lose their crypto investment either to the market or to theft.

Try contacting Binance on Twitter, or on their official website. Clearly and thoroughly explained what happen, as well as prepare your proof.

https://twitter.com/BinanceHelpDesk
https://www.binance.com/en/chat

You didn't give details about your brother's deception. If he assisted in trade, doesn't that imply he was a member of the team in some capacity, which suggests he was aware of what he was doing? I don't think that for $2,000, Binance will help. These are huge sums for you, but not for the exchange. When contacting crypto, a person must understand all the risks, whether he trades incorrectly or stores his seed phrases incorrectly.
As for your questions, I don’t know the reasons that could prohibit a person from having large amounts of bitcoin; this is probably how he ensures his business, and indeed, only the owner can know why he needs such large amounts. Similarly, I do not see any consequences; if a person does not violate any laws, why should he be afraid of someone? Of course, he is not obliged to talk about how much and why he needs bitcoins. This is his right to privacy.

How was the tracking done? Sometimes scammers mislead some by sending money to other people's Binance accounts or mixing them with some of the addresses belonging to Binance.
If you are sure that the money was sent directly to Binance, then your chance of recovering it is great, just be quick and contact the support team.
Other than that, perhaps if you post transaction ID , we may be able to give you more information.

and yes, Some whales (+10K BTC) post their bitcoins for commercial, tax or other reasons.

They are not rich enough, they are just dealing with something that they largely do not understand, and the consequences of that are financial losses. Let's take for example the OP who is a Member rank with the potential to become a Full member, and asks such a banal question about whales, as if it is impossible for someone today to have 1000 or 10 000 BTC or even much more.

The Winklevoss twins reportedly have over 100 000 BTC, and MicroStrategy has over 130 000 - and I'm sure there are those who own even larger amounts that are not publicly exposed. Regardless of one's opinion about it, I think that such things should be private as much as possible, at least when it comes to private individuals who can become an easy target for hackers, as well as ordinary criminals.

This address is not someone's personal address, it is a hot wallet of a largest exchangr  called Binance. So the scammer steals your bitcoins and deposits them in Binance Exchange so when you scan your wallets for Bitcoin transactions from your wallet it points to Binance Hot Wallet. So it is now almost impossible for you to spot the scammer

Look at the image on that thread you linked and read the message. That incident took place 12 years ago, and Bitcoin is now 14 years old. As of then, 1 bitcoin was not even worth $100. From records, Bitcoin reached $1 for the first time in February 2011, and in 2012, people saw the price at $12, less or more. So I assume such an offer could have only been made then and not now.

You can say yes, but believe me, nobody will offer you 2000 bitcoins now just to change your name to Bitcoin.

I guess it is not a private individual that has such a large holding but rather a company that deals in bitcoin like the forex companies, a CEX, or a casino (as also mentioned by Dave1).

Yes, that's for sure.

Early adopters and buyers and most likely they've never touched it ever since and have believed or probably have forgotten that they own a lot. Remember that everyone has a timeline when we've bought bitcoin and lucky are those that have bought when it was one, two, three or four digits for its price.

Maybe there is and like how they're going to convert it all at once since policies for huge amount of transactions in exchanges and banks are quite strict.

Another one is the stress, a positive stress on how they're going to spend it.

One of the best known today is the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust fund. The fund currently holds around 330,000 BTC, which is 1.7 percent of all BTC in circulation. Satoshi Nakamoto is thought to have an apparent ownership of 1 million Bitcoins, and some of the users who bought bitcoins when bitcoin was first launched could also be among these whales. so yes, of course there are whales, but these accounts could also belong to a centralized system that holds people's bitcoins.

Grayscale is not an individual but rather institutional investors that holds and manage all the assets invested to them by their customer. I agree that the only known individual that possessed huge amount of Bitcoin and true whale is Satoshi but there’s a lot of Bitcoin whale investors investors that privately stored there coins in there wallet like Elon Musk, Cz and other big person in crypto that too obvious that has the capacity to own huge chunk of Bitcoin without the need to prove by themselves.


1.) Yes they are but as the word private itself is self explanatory that we will have a hard time to track them 1 by 1.

2.)Why not if he/she truly believes on Bitcoin?

3.) What kind of consequences you are pertaining? Because only the price volatility is the only downside of Bitcoin which will be negligible in the long run if you just hodl.

I think it is never too late depending on when this incidence took place. If you found the scammed or hacked bitcoin in binance hot wallet then there is a possibility that the hacker must have traded or exchanged it for fiat or so.  What I would advise you to do is that you can still contact binance support to lay a complaint in respect to the movement of the bitcoin to their wallet also your brother should be able to have an account with binance so the communication can scale through successfully for them to monitor the transaction and know where and who is responsible for the hack and also account freezing would definitely be the next step taken to safe guard your brothers funds. So sorry about the occurrence. Your brother must have gone through trauma. Only a person that has gone through that experience would say it better. It is very much devastating. I just pray binance takes it up swiftly  upon your complaint.

Yeah, I know I sound a bit dismissive sometimes -- I don't really mind the banal questions so much, I know I asked them years ago (not about Bitcoin but same approach I used to have when dealing with digital money). It's more the made-up "personal stories" I seem to find more and more now, coming in the same style and banality that gets to me.

Still, a good reminder to myself that I should always give the benefit of doubt, having enjoyed that myself in days gone. I hope OP comes back with findings after contacting Binance.

Spot on about privacy though... we got plenty enough threats to protect what we have, doesn't help to paint a target on ourselves.

Others have already pointed out that very rich addresses often belong not to individuals but to crypto exchanges, casinos and similar enterprises. And yes, technically, an exchange can perform massive scam, stealing lots of money, but the chance of that happening isn't high and the chance of such funds being poured into attempts of manipulating the market price of Bitcoin seems even lower.
Are there some people who are Bitcoin billionaires? Yeah, most likely. Do they have enough power and motivation to use all that wealth to manipulate the price? I don't think so. So to me, whales don't exist. At least not when it comes to Bitcoin.

There are, especially pioneers.  Also there are publicly known Bitcoin whales like

Micree Zhan - is the Co-Founder of the Bitcoin mining company, Bitmain Technologies. Zhan is rumored to own the second largest wealth of Bitcoin. Zhan currently lives in Beijing.

Chris Larsen - is one of the early trailblazers of cryptocurrency. Founder and former CEO of Ripple, Larsen is the second confirmed wealthiest Bitcoin billionaire. Despite his recent criticisms of the cryptocurrency industry, Larsen is estimated to be the wealthiest person to build his entire fortune on crypto. His net worth is estimated to be over $6 billion.

Changpeng Zhao - When you found one of the largest cryptocurrencies exchanges in the world, it would make sense that you are also one of the leaders in the Bitcoin space. Changpeng Zhao founded Binance in 2017 after spending years working on Wall Street. Zhao has a large online presence, and has become popular for it.
Zhao continues to be a thought leader in the crypto world, with his own cryptocurrency now the third largest. Zhao’s net worth is estimated to be around $1.9 billion, almost all of which from cryptocurrencies, primarily Bitcoin.

Source: https://blog.coinsource.net/who-owns-the-most-bitcoin/


They are people who have insight and belief that Bitcoin will be adopted and will grow in price.  They are businessmen or entrepreneurs, investors that wanted to take advantage of the potential profit Bitcoin offers.


In every action there is always a reaction, definitely, there will be consequences to their action, one of example is BIR pursuing them for crypto taxes, possible huge money lost if Bitcoin fail. ( But it is doing great atm)

Or even if whales exist, they won't manipulate the market because it is not their advantage to do so.
If only one whale will do such manipulation, it may create a dent but not sufficient to sustain the market.
So it may be a sudden movement, but it will just go back to where it was. And remember, these whales are not communicating with each other.
If a certain big whale can see that he can manipulate the btc market, maybe someone already would have done that.
But when it comes to btc market, I don't think they can, unless all of them unite and decide what they want, but that's not gonna happen.

Bitcoin whales must be more careful with their money than the rest of investors, because they are the preferential target of hackers. That is not an exclusivity of bitcoin whales, though. Every individuals who hold large sums of money or properties become an easy target for thieves. In crypto environment it's just worse, because people here have easy anonymous access to anyone, doesn't matter their location. Days ago it was an early bitcoin developer who had his btc wallets hacked. It's a clear example of clever hackers watching whales and early devs/adopters' steps.

Are you talking about the man who perhaps promotes shitcoins most of all through his CEX, and also invented various tokens that he pushes as a replacement for Bitcoin at every possible opportunity? He is no leader but an entrepreneur who has made billions by charging extremely expensive service fees to everyone who uses his CEX.



It is not any cryptocurrency, but an ordinary worthless token that will experience the same fate as the one that recently collapsed and dragged FTX to the abyss. If there is any truth in the fact that CZ keeps its digital assets in Bitcoin, then it is really a paradox because at the same time, he promotes its token and various shitcoins as something better than Bitcoin.

That's very true and recently he introduced zero trading fees just to get back his customers that had boycott the exchange and also to attract other traders. On twitter I see him recently discrediting self custody saying it isn't safe and I believe what he's trying to do is make his followers think them storing coins on his exchange is the best way since now they won't have to worry about protecting their Bitcoin but just hold Changpeng Zhao  responsible.

CZ just like other centralized CEO are anti Bitcoin because they all what their own coins to get all or most of the attention to grow. I won't be surprised if exchange does nothing about the Op Case If he reports. They only go after the big cases so they get media attention and coverage to look like the good guys and attract more customers.

There are definitely some super rich people, and they are either people who already had a lot of fiat and bought a lot of bitcoins, or people who did not have a lot of fiat but got lucky and bought bitcoin or some other coins for cheap. That is why I truly believe that there are whales because we know and can see some of the wallets, they are whales and it is proven by the wallets size.

I do not have that much connection or understanding towards any of them, never had that much money in my life, even in my dreams I am a lazy person so if I got lucky and had tens of millions of dollars, all I would want is a cool room with good pc and playstation and my books and just play games and nap, that's it, that's all I would want from life.

Not only on some known markets but also in cryptospace on where there are really that whales who do possess tons of money which they could really give out that kind of effect in the market if these whales would really be deciding to move as one which the financial capabilities or capacities of these people could really move out the market according to their likes.They do want to aim for more profits and this is why
manipulative acts is  really that something common to happen but its impossible to tell and point out and this is where it is really that totally unpredictable on where the price moves.
Some of time where technical analysis do works but it could mess up on an instant basing up with whales decisions.

Well there are, not only in this technology but to all industries. Whales are simply HUGE investors that can make a 'wave' or partial manipulation with the market price of something. But as others have mentioned already, the address OP have mentioned might probably be from an exchanger. But if you guys are really curious about it, try surfacing on this web or chains and you'd see wallet addresses holding huge amounts of cryptocurrencies.
On my awareness, sometimes they are the ones to create the direction which small investors like me, follows. Those movements are the slight and quick spikes with the market price of a particular token. We may see it on the order list of any exchanger especially if there's a news positive for this industry or a particular token. They are somehow 'supporters' of hype, I guess.

For me, crypto whales are real. They're the reason why the market price moves. We can't move the price just by trading with our money because that is just cent compare to them. We people who invested in a cryptocurrency will really benefit from them in the way we can gain so much profit when the price goes up they are the ones who can only do a massive move in the market's price. But this doesn't mean there's no risk for us, as they can do massive increase of price, they can also make the go down deeper because they hold a lot of money in that currency, in other words, they can manipulate the market.

actually we shouldn't focus too much on whales, if we invest for the long term. but in my opinion it is possible for people to have tens of thousands of bitcoins, because if we remember that bitcoin was cheap in 2009, so if we also bought bitcoins in the past there would have been the potential to own large amounts of bitcoins. but if I think the price of bitcoin will not be affected by whales, just try to imagine if the whale sells tens of thousands of bitcoins, it will definitely go down, but that will only be for a moment, because of course there are very many who set prices to buy bitcoins at cheap prices. so even if it goes down, of course it won't take long because the price will bounce again
to the top.

I suspect that the police in many countries have a lot of Bitcoin and USDT in their hands. Are these people considered predators?
I think this should be counted, but they may only have one action, which is to find a way to sell Bitcoin.

BTC wallets containing large amounts are most likely owned by big crypto companies.
The true Bitcoin whales own several wallets and keep their BTC in all of them. You know the saying "Never put all eggs in one basket".
There's no reason for a Bitcoin whale to keep his BTC in one wallet. The risk is higher.
What do you mean by "our takes on them"? Every industry has it's own early adopters and successful investors, who profited the most out of the industry's growth. The crypto industry is no different. It doesn't matter if we like or hate the crypto whales, we can't deny them.

The cryptocurrency market is still new, there is no regulation or regulation of the legal authorities, so it can be said that this place is a favorite place for the big players we call whales.

Almost all financial markets have price manipulation, but in larger markets like forex or stocks, manipulating the price is very difficult because the volume of transactions is too large and requires a huge amount of money to manipulate, so almost not many people can do it. But with this small crypto market, everything becomes a lot easier, so they will always take advantage of this opportunity.

But under the current circumstances, it won't be easy to move the market as the bitcoin price is already above $17k. The whales need a lot of bitcoins to shake up the market price and that's only possible for one market because to shake up the prices in many markets, you need a lot of bitcoins. And if you want to avoid taking that big risk, you don't need to follow the whales and instead invest as usual by buying bitcoin at a low price and holding it.

Due to the transparency of blockchain real whales won't hold all their money on a single address. They know anybody can watch these addresses and they don't want to start panic whenever they move their coins and they don't want to share with the whole world that they gave coins to someone or bought something worth a lot of money.

Newbies end up watching big addresses that belong to exchanges and people like Michael Saylor and other big whales will keep on doing what they're doing without anybody noticing because they have 20 separate wallets with 10 million dollars in each of them. 

The explorer itself has a tag Binance in it so its owned by Binance which means the scammer moved the stolen bitcoins to Binance and probably converted into Fiat but such an amateur scammer act because he moved to an exchange which has KYC so if you can take legal action then surely you can find the identity of the scammer but just for 2K its not worth to take such actions since the fee can be more higher than the actual scammed money.

Crypto whales are true and most of them emerged in the early days of bitcoin when they bought it for very less price comparing to what is the current rate.

Are there truly crypto whales and what are your takes on them?
It is interesting to note Bitcoin whales, on average, are much different than in traditional investment markets. Many of our wealthy BTC siblings were quite young - and nervous - when they suddenly became rich. Greed and Fear rule the markets: Next time you see the Crypto markets going completely nuts, in either direction, you might be watching some of our insecure whales freaking out again.

Whales do exist and I think whales do have a lot of bitcoin and an example is Michael Saylor's. I think Michael Saylor's has even more bitcoins. But we also have to know that most likely the whales will definitely save or spread their bitcoins into several wallets or dozens of wallets. and it is not possible to store them in one wallet. and if you find a wallet with a large number of bitcoins in one wallet as you show. then I think it is a wallet belonging to a centralized crypto exchange like binance. and it is common to find CEX wallets that hold many bitcoins belonging to CEX users themselves.

~Are there private individuals who own and posses such amount of Bitcoin? Yes, and it's easy to check just check on the blockchain, you can check each adress which belong to individual or company
~Why will one posses such amount as an Individual? whale basicly those that trust btc and gamble all in from beggining of btc. i know people that sell all their belonging to buy btc at 2011 guess how much they have now. they only sell 1-2 btc to hold on bank. 
~Are there any consequences to this? ofc they control the market, just like in stock or forex whale/institute exist that move and profit the most on the market, as we chase them to eat their crumb