Bitcoin Forum

Mysterious but true, an unknown Bitcoin whale transferred 278.88 ($8M) BTC from his 10-year inactive wallet to three different addresses on Friday after being completely inactive for the past 10 years.
He originally bought and held 1,128 bitcoins in a wallet in 2012 and 2013 when the price of bitcoin was $12 and $195 respectively, but suddenly became active after 10 years and removed 279 bitcoins.

Here's it transferred explorers..
https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/12At4GGP8J5p4MtdjNy1SPSkqKEM1mw2FS


How come a holder did not transfer his bitcoins after being inactive for ten years i.e. in 2021 when the price of bitcoins peaked, but in today's down market why did he transfer his bitcoins?

Ref:
https://twitter.com/lookonchain/status/1649387289745977344?s=19
https://decrypt.co/137493/bitcoin-whale-moves-nearly-8m-after-10-years-inactivity

Who would know? Your guess is as good as mine. It's possible that the owner has finally just gained access to it. Or he/she finally decided to move the funds to a much safer storage, or perhaps even sell them.

But this isn't new. Every once in a while there's a dormant wallet that suddenly becomes active after a decade or even more. I think it was last year when a wallet containing hundreds of Bitcoin suddenly woke up after 11 years. The last time the wallet was active was when Satoshi was still active.

We've seen many of them in the past and this is no longer a surprising act that there are dormant accounts that have became alive lately whether it's bearish or bullish trend.
Well, the bearish trend pass 2021 is no longer that bearish at all if these bitcoins were accumulated 10 years ago or even just after 5 years ago. A lot of things have changed especially the pricing so, if they want to sell and come back to those forgotten accounts that used to be held by them, it's now profit taking for them. And to those that have been promoting HODL, this is what actually HODLing is.

No one know except the person who owns the funds but we might speculate something out of this.  One of which is the possibility of the person needing a fund to pay for something if the movement is to sell the Bitcoin and convert it to fiat.  Another reason would be he is just moving some part of the fund on different address for safekeeping.  But whatever the reason is, it is not the first time we heard of a long time idle coins to be moved and sold at the market.

As colleagues have said, we can't know, but getting the high point of a bull market right is very difficult, and I remind you that back then, we all expected the peak of the cycle to be much higher. $150K ATH was a bearish prediction for what was being said at the time.

Now you may be short the money, is what I would imagine. By transferring to 3 addresses he is probably not going to spend it all but at least one of them is still HODLing, but this is just a guess.

We can not step in shoes of that whale but everything is possible and my guess is he can move his bitcoins to a new wallet. Years ago, we did not have multisig wallet but now we have it. If that whale feels like a multisig wallet is better than a single signature wallet, he could make his decision to change his way for bitcoin storage.

If it is not related to cash out, it's very possible like the reason I guessed.

Someone just got out of prison after 10 years and then cash out his stash, Lol.

But who knows, your guess is as good as mine, maybe he just stumbled upon a old laptop and then see the private key and mnemonic phrase. And that is a long HODL though and it's just surprising that someone will suddenly move it when we are not even in the bull run.

The prison scenario seems like one of the more-likely ones to me. There are 100 other possibilites, from someone finding an old harddrive with the keys to being in need of some quick cash-flow for an unexpected reason.
However 280 BTC isn't a massive amount that would have any huge impact on the market at all.
Also, regarding your question about cashing out in the current market situation: I don't think the market is THAT bad right now, it's still up over 75% from recent lows, so if you know you need the cash within the next 6 - 12 months, now seems like a reasonable time to cash-out (even though I think going doller-cost-average over a period of a few months is usuall the better way).

There could be a lot of reasons most of which have nothing to do with the market.
For example one reason would be to change wallet. For example I have some coins from back in 2014 that I haven't moved to this day (that is also close to 10 years), I have a plan to set a new wallet up using a brand new USB disk (ie. a cold storage with Ubuntu and Electrum) and using the new address format (P2WPKH) and send them there and also claim some of the shitcoin airdrops. I haven't had the time to do it yet though.

Having transferred a large sum of Bitcoins does not mean that he has converted them into shitty Fiat.  There could be many causes, perhaps your wallet is compromised and you thought of securing them or it was really compromised and you lost them completely or you switched to a hardware wallet and split into 3 different addresses... in short, really impossible to know .

OP, just as others have said, there are a lot of reasons to speak about why the holder moved their asset; it may not be that they want to trade the coin now, but maybe to a safer wallet.

The guy who owns that wallet may even be a member of this forum (just exaggerating), reading updates about Bitcoin, and also having set a dream price that can tempt them to sell, because with the historic price of Bitcoin, many are speculating for another ATH, so until they see their speculated price, they may not sell yet.

Some months ago, I was reading comments on a topic where the OP asked, "What can make someone sell their bitcoin?" There was a lot of reply by memebers here; I still can remember that one reputable legendary memeber here commented; I would not mention his name, but he said, "What can only trigger him to sell some of his Bitcoin is if he sees a price like $100k at that moment, which he can't resist but to sell just a few of his coins." With that, I know there are people here who have up to that amount of Bitcoin or even more, and they are not even ready to sell yet until they see a very tempting price.

They are all hypotheses, but he is free to control his money and possible hypotheses:

 - Discover a way to reach his currencies.
 - He had an emergency circumstance or lost his basic work.
 - He found an investment opportunity that would return it with a return of $ 8 million before the price increased.

Whether it is correct or not, it is proven that the inactive currencies are not considered missing currencies unless they are sent to a proof of burning address

Interesting that here no-one mentioned the top reason Reddit users did
- 10 years in jail ?  ;D

Either way, even if it's about regaining aces or regaining freedom for sure it's not about the price!
If he wanted money he would have cashed out way earlier, in 2027 when the was just a bit lower and not even mentioning when it hit $60k, besides, after one hop the coins haven't moved so definitely not moved to an exchange.

Anyhow, the really interesting part is that he's not moving random sums priced in $ or rounded BTC values, he's moving entire inputs and breaking them into ~90 BTC. Wonder if he plans on mixing them.

Yep, this is a good one.
I would add: what if the original owner has died (or just thinking about death and inheritance) and now his money got split between members of his family?
Or what if somebody has read (this late, I know, but it happens) Luke's story and decided to split his funds and maybe also keep them into more secure ways (eg. HW)?

There are lots of reasons as to why the sudden move of the 278.88 BTC from the inactive wallet to 3 different wallets but one of the reasons that comes into my mind is that the fund could have been kept as a kind of inheritance. Maybe, it is finally been splitted into 3 amongst the 3 beneficiaries or heirs.

He just moved it, didn't he? meaning he didn't lose anything for not selling it when the price reached ATH in 2021, but even if he sold it now he still didn't lose anything just didn't make any more money than he sold it two years ago.
If the BTC is still in the hands of the person who bought it then his patience pays off, and it proves that holding BTC for the long term is very profitable and probably more profitable than trading BTC.

 He/she is truly holder but something like this is not new sometime dormant address transfer their fortune into a new Bitcoin address format example. native segwit.

and we do don't know the truly reason is but one things is sure is not transferred to exchange address for now  ;D

Hmm, not so sure, it doesn't look like or feel like it.
He is spending full inputs and moving them into batches of ~90 BTC but not of equal value, there is a 5 BTC difference between the current 5 addresses that hold those coins, plus he would have moved them all, right? If it were an inheritance they would have done it with all of it combined, not leaving some there, and for sure not a 3-hour difference between the two outgoing tx.

Well, probably I'm inclined to think of this because that's what I would do if I were him, split it slowly and carefully into small batches, make the back-ups, split again, and then slowly erase the traces by mixing them before liquidating smaller amounts. With $40 million even if I would go through KYC and pay all my taxes and be completely legit I still wouldn't want anyone to trace my steps. Imagine making a one-time payment at a coffee shop in the neighborhood or some online store with your name and address and some employee with too much time on his hand discovering you have 1000 BTC on you!

Who knows. It could've been just someone who until recently didn't know about what happened to Bitcoin, or just happened to crack the password recently due to forgetting it or something similar. The thing is we can create a lot of assumptions but without a bit more context behind it, we can't really decide on anything concrete and would only end up having assumptions on top of assumptions. There is the context of splitting it into 3 almost equal parts, don't really know what that means but I reckon it means he's planning to do something, at least a part of it, actively.

Either way dude just probably forgot an old laptop rotting in the corner of his room and decided to clean it up only to find this, is the story I'd go with.

This guy turned out to have an iron endurance, which can be envied. He had enough patience for all the negative background that had been building up all these years, to ignore it and keep holding BTC.

He probably wanted to buy a new lambo or a yacht. :) That's why I sold it now, and not at the peak. Even the current sale turned out to be super profitable for him compared to the original purchase price.

Don't have to be overly greedy. You can't earn all the money. 8 mln.$ is a very big jackpot, which is a sin to complain about. Moreover, he still has 849BTC left on his balance sheet (Maybe more. No one knows how many wallets he still has).

Let's look at what happen here: List of Major Bitcoin Heists, Thefts, Hacks, Scams, and Losses [Old] (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83794.0), specially in 2012, here. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83794.0#post_tony_silk_road_scam) 

Maybe the person is one of those who pulled out the heist that year and after 10 years just decided to move out and maybe thought that there's no more heat on that BTC. But all eyes are on those old Bitcoin addresses that has a lot and have been tracked by some entities and will be reported if it moved.

I'm still waiting for Satoshi to be released ;)

There is of course a much more likely possibility: the owner has more than one Bitcoin address, and could have been using them all those years.

That's really common. I mean, some people bought Bitcoin pretty early and have been holding onto it for years without touching their wallets. It's normal to see people waking up after years of holding. This guy is pretty lucky since he bought a lot of Bitcoin in 2012, especially on October 12, 2012.
 
He bought 400 BTC, which is almost worth $11 million at the current Bitcoin rate  :o

Typically, people only cash out  when they need them urgently or move their coins to a more secure hardware wallet for safety reasons. I wish I had a time machine to go back to 2012 and buy that much Bitcoin lol  :P

There has been a lot of speculation about the exit of bitcoins from old wallets but it is not certain whether the BTC will be sold or transferred to a safe place or as you said distributed to heirs and we cannot guess which one is correct because it cannot be verify accurately.

This is not the first time that I have seen that maybe there is a reason why the owner of the old wallet wants to transfer bitcoins to 3 different wallets but until now these assets are still there and not for sale, that's just my possibility.

That's a Hodler he can hold more btc for a long time.

There's a lot of possible things can be use it can be the holder just want to transfer those assets into more safe storage to make sure there can be holding for other years, or also can be bought in to other coins just to make an investment every time this kind of whale holders have their assets sell especially bitcoin it has a huge kind of impact to the market. Still ideal for kindly holding those assets for the another bull run.

No one ever knew what the whales had been thinking.  That is a very large number.  I was thinking what if they traded by the time BTC hit ATH.  But that is something that cannot be predicted.  People say they are incumbents but I don't think so either because not trading for 10 years is a long figure for a long term investment.

Is this the reason behind the recent dump in BTC price? Well, there are many possibilities why this dormant whale has finally moved his BTCs to somewhere else. He can be just moving his holdings to new wallets or preparing to sell it.

People are constantly changing their minds, goals and plans. Your currently "yourself" isn't the same from 2021. The same could be said about this whale. Maybe he didn't think it was a good idea to sell during the last ATH, but due to the scenario after that and personal challenges faced on his life, he might have decided to finally make good use of that big money.

If you ask whom do I asked?
Then my suggestion towards this was like the owner has a target of holding for 10 years or more before moving any unit of it. Now he decides to sell some units so I don't think there is any big deal if someone moved his holding to other address since he felt insecure on his current address were he was holding it.
There is every chance he just decides to change address and split his investment for a better security measures imo.

I don't think this wallet has caused the BTC price to drop recently I assume it is there are other factors that could have caused it.
But I believe whales that are inactive by moving old BTC to be ready for sale but that's not the only conclusion we think this is all just wanting to move it or save it to a safer wallet.

If the owner of the wallet doesn't sell his BTC at his last ATH then he just wants to achieve a higher ATH in the next few years, when there is a move at a time when the price is down then this will be a different scenario I would argue maybe he just wants to break some BTC into another wallet with a specific purpose and he doesn't sell the current price even though it is said that the whale has also made a profit because he bought it at a lower price, but the fact is that other reasons are always different so the whale always has a better plan to see the next price in the future.

There can be different reasons why he didn't move his Bitcoins in the previous bull run when the price hit its all-time high, the very first is that he probably didn't have access to his wallet back then, or he might even have forgotten that he had bought some Bitcoins back then and still have them somewhere, but I don't think this could have been the reason.

Also, the reason for him moving some of his assets could also be something else and he may not be selling them yet, he could possibly be changing his Bitcoin storage or splitting them into separate wallets for more safety, we never know.

Probably Satoshi with his other unregistered wallets cashing in on that good good crypto money.

Kiddings aside, I think it's good at the very least. More bitcoins in circulation, less hassle when it comes to earning. And I don't think it's going to dilute bitcoin's value that much anyway, so at the expense of a higher circulating supply I'd say this is a great deal.

Speculating on who this guy might be though is a little bit futile I think? Bitcoin is made to be anonymous, let alone someone who didn't have any interactions with the industry for 10 and a half years, so while it is a good exercise, I don't think there's any point to finding out who this guy is. Besides, if they feel like it they will do what they can to out themselves as the guy who sold their bitcoins from years ago.

Indeed, then it's most probably the original owner and he knows what he's doing.
Still the other scenarios can remain - more or less - on the table, from splitting for heirs (it doesn't have to be 3 heirs, the heirs don't have to get the same amount) to splitting for hardware wallets or simply keeping a couple of millions in various places scattered over the world (there was a family already claiming to do so or years).

Also this scenario also makes a lot of sense (and can add to the story) :

I really think the whale is kind of late, he/she should have withdrawn some crypto out when bitcoin price was around 70 grand, but wondering why now...and this certainly can't  be about security...or  maybe our whale  is gifting some coins to the next generation in the family  ::) and btw taking out profits now not the best moves to be honest.
Am also assuming people with such wallets own several of these kind of wallets because 10.5years ago bitcoin was well discounted for anybody to buy a good amount for cheap, whatever the motive do spoil yourself you deserve  it.
  

The only reasonable thing why that whale moved his bitcoins is problem there's something big that the owner is planning and that whale's need it just coincided with this market or maybe it's a personal kind of emergency, we will never know until the whale themselve speak up about the reason why, also the whale doesn't really lost anything, 30k USD compared to the price that he bought those bitcoins, that whale is still winning.

Is he a strong hodler, Did he just forget he owns those BTC, or he lost access and recently got it back? Who cares? It's his personal asset and he has every right to use it as he likes. Or maybe it's a case of hacking.
Even if he sells all of his hodlings, will that have an impact that will cause a major movement in the market? No. So there's nothing to worry about anything here.
Bitcoin is a long-term investment asset and this proves it very well. In the long run, you can gain unimaginable profits. It can not happen overnight. If anyone asks me now what can Bitcoin give you, I will just say if you have the will to hold it for a long period of time you can get what you are asking for. And I can show them this.

The funny thing is that most of these users are not even active on the spaces like Reddit or Bitcointalk, they dont even care what we speculate here but minding their own business with their coins. ;D

I know these type of topics end up inducing some fear and bearish emotions among newbies so anybody reading this keep in mind that people have their own liberty to whatever they want with their coins and that may or may not affect the market in what way we think.

As an older member of this forum it is my duty to inform newbies that what you see happening on social media or forums does not necessarily explain the bearish/bullish trend, rather it is a cumulative effect or many things that are beyond our control of coins being sent here and there. So control your emotions and treat them as just numbers not as panic pills.

We can only answer probabilities and no one knows the real reason why the whale withdrew his bitcoins, for sure he made more profit than what he deposited before, his investment was not wasted for 10 years, yes indeed it is quite strange for a long term bitcoin holder long that's why he's not looking for momentum at the best price of bitcoin, will raise some assumptions based on guesswork, but what is certain is that investing in bitcoin as long as it makes you a rich man and even if he is an old person it is enough for his old age, or he moving his wealth to what he wants in the real world and not minding the price.

alot of people think that people need to be a strong/iron endurance holder to hold for 10 years
yet in the real world many people save for longer as standard

saving to put kids into college, =18 years
saving for retirement ~40 years

what people forget is not everyone is a day trader. alot of people do actually think about long term investing.
so dont be surprised by people hoarding coins for long periods.. its more common then people think

1130~ back then was not even $10k total
also 280 coin of 2012 was less then $2k total invested at the time. so its not like they were a whale when they first bought bitcoin

there are real whales with 10k -100k btc.... talking about someone with 1.2k btc is more of a shark than a whale

There must be speculations about this when this kind of news comes out, but i don't think this is the reason, this whale didn't even send his BTC to an exchange to liquidate it, he just swept it into different new addresses, so the BTC is still in the network and amongst the circulating supply. BTC dumps happen for different reasons, not just one only, there may have been some combined reason why the price fell a little bit, but it is already going back up again.

There could be countless reasons as to why the owner decided to move funds just now and not when the price was skyrocketing. The owner may have been well of financially and decided to not touch the funds if not necessary, or maybe he forgot his keys and managed to find it just recently. Whichever the case, this is a good thing since this just proves that not all inactive wallets mean that the coins within them are forever lost. And also with this, some hoarded bitcoins gets circulated in the market which is great for bitcoin in the long run.

There aee many whales who holds huge number of bitcoins but their wallets are dormant for long time and if you keep record of these transactions you would notice it's not new as many times they move funds from one wallet to another but saying why they were inactive during peak time is hard or maybe they didn't want to sell at that time so who knows.As others said maybe they got access back to their wallets so anything could be possible on which we should not be a worried a lot.

I think there are endless possibilities for this. He may not intended to sell them even at the 2021 or 2017 prices, and we can award him a true holders trophy. I mean imagine, seeing the prices soaring and he was almost a billionaire by that time. The intentions seem way different than that, his hunger is far more than that and most importantly he has almost unbeatable trust in bitcoin for sure.

I think these groups will keep tracking where further the bitcoins are getting moved. If it hits the exchanger's destination address then we can claim that he might have needed those funds and just sold them.

What about the stolen case?
Is there a possibility that hackers are trying out their "luck" over dormant wallets such as this one?
Though it's next to impossible to brut force wallets, that's why I added the word luck. :)

He might have serious reasons why he doing this because it is unusual to move such a huge amount of BTC after a decade, I think most probably right now he needed some money or just wanted to keep it in a different wallet. There is some tendency that someone to get it from him and decided to steal it. anything has a possibility here and one thing we need to take a lesson from this, is we really need to know how to slowly move our BTC if we have that huge amount because moving it at once will lure all eyes on us and might gonna get us in trouble if we don't take care.

Considering that 10 years ago bitcoin was used a lot to buy, how can I say, not exactly legal products, the prison theory makes sense. Another one is that maybe the guy is giving some bitcoin to a member of his family for whatever reason: buying a house, kid turning 18, wedding, or some other big life event like those. It doesn't necessarily mean those bitcoin are going to be sold.

Last thing, had I owned 1000+ bitcoin I would have split them a long time ago, you never know what could happen, I wouldn't feel safe having them all in one wallet.

He has plans for sure.
We can think of possibilities such as the wallet have been forgotten, or lost and just recently found, and such. Diversification as well could be a possibility but bottomline is, we won't know unless the individual would introduce him/herself discussing what will he do and answering our why's. Ten years is a long interval and what we should be emphasizing is the length of time a huge amount was held 'coz if I were him, I have probably sold it on previous ATHs 'coz no one would expect corrections or higher market values or simply jo one has full control of the market price movement right? We just have our own reasons from doing things whether it is against the norm or not.

And they say governments control and monitor our financial activities, we the people are worse than governments, such people are the same working for govs, some nosey individuals.😉

Having questions about;

Why he didnt sell on peak?
Why he planned to make some action now on a bear market?

So there's possible reasons which i could make think of.
- Maybe he had that 10 year target or goal on which he would be making a selling or accessing his wallet after 10 years. Yes, there are people who do have strong will and discipline on
following up their goals and plans without having no doubt and on extreme manner.

-Maybe he had just recently remembered that he had purchased some Bitcoins wayback into those years and recently able to find out his keys? (No one knows)

These are the only possible reasons after a long time of inactivity. There's no way on finding out the actual reason considering those coins had been moving now
after a decade. It is really just that amazing to see on there are people who are really that diamond hands and now they've been cherishing out millions
of dollars just because of that patient that they had been trying out to resist to move those coins.

If bitcoin wallets remain in the possession of their owners, sooner or later they begin to move. The fact that only a small part of the bitcoins is transferred, although in the amount of about eight million dollars, I think, means that this person will dispose of them after some time. If it is not urgent for him, then of course, it would be better to wait until the next Bitcoin halving, which is expected in 2024, when it reaches the highest price values.
But a very significant part of the bitcoin is lost, especially in the early years of its existence, when it was valued very little and its safety was neglected. The owner of this wallet is very lucky. Not many people have the patience to resist the temptation and cash out the coins for their needs.

Perhaps some whales want to transfer their bitcoins to a safe place because of rumours on the dark net that someone has been cracking old btc paper wallets.

https://twitter.com/crypto_bitlord7/status/1650604763585585167 (https://twitter.com/crypto_bitlord7/status/1650604763585585167)

Maybe he just found an old computer or paper wallet which was though to be lost or something and that das was a very lucky day to get access again.

I have seen the wildest stories on youtube about people going to some specialist to recover some long lost data or wallet just to get this pleasant surprise.

If this isn't the case then a big shout out to him to preise the hodl mentality for this long!!

With all these ups and downs, especially over the past 6 years, this truely is an achievement!