Inactive BTC whale transfers $8M worth Bitcoin After 10 years Inactivity

[LDL]

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

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[Darker45]

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.

[tabas]

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?

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.

[BitDane]

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?

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.

[Poker Player]

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?

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.

[OcTradism]

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?

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.

[TravelMug]

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.

[Kryptowerk]

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).

[pooya87]

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?

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.

[mendace]

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 .

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

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.

[hugeblack]

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

[stompix]

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

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.

[NeuroticFish]

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

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)?

[sokani]

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.

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.

[Strongkored]

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?

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.

[dansus021]

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?

 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 

[stompix]

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?

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!

[Wexnident]

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.

[m2017]

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).