A few points of interest:The largest Bitcoin address in existence is:
1DkyBEKt5S2GDtv7aQw6rQepAvnsRyHoYMThis is not a very typical high balance bitcoin address, for several reasons.
For example:
- It's new money, not old coin.
- Has been accumulating wealth somewhat steadily since
late 2011 early 2012.
- The balance is not a nice round figure.
- Perhaps most importantly,
it's alive!
Now, interestingly:
- On July 17 this address had a balance of 517825 BTC.
- On July 17 Bitcoin looked on the verge of breaking 10 USD/BTC on Mt.Gox.
- On July 17 two large withdrawals of respectively 20000BTC and 60000BTC were made from this address.
- On July 17 someone sold tens of thousands of bitcoins at market price (instantaneously) in several batches.
Opening questions:- Are the several large dumps that occurred on July 17 consistent with the 80k BTC withdrawn from 1DkyBEKt5S2GDtv7aQw6rQepAvnsRyHoYM on that day?
- Is the time of the withdrawal roughly consistent with withdrawal -> transfer to and confirmation by Mt.Gox -> dump?
- Could 1DkyBEKt5S2GDtv7aQw6rQepAvnsRyHoYM responsible for the dumps of July 17?
Later that day: An (unauthenticated?) user going by the nick pirateat40 spoke on Freenode's #bitcoin IRC channel:
<pirateat40> this is the first time ive ever played the market. It was simply a statement, I don't plan on making it part of my process. It's simply a warning.
<proudhon> pirateat40, could you stop another "rally" if one were to ignite right now and buy up above $10?
<pirateat40> proudhon, i could take [you] to 1.80 if i needed to.
<pirateat40> well guys, i think i've scared off the sellers. I'm tired and going to call it night and let the bots play. IRCFrEAK, im pulling the my wall and dumping.... Get ready!
Added:
More about that fascinating story here.
<pirateat40> #btcst comments and price movements on July 17. 2012:(Image credit: Unknown. Please link me to whoever made this originally.)
Further questions:- Would 80K BTC be sufficient to depress the price to 1.8 USD / BTC on July 17?
- Would 517K BTC be sufficient to depress the price to 1.8 USD / BTC on July 17?
- Does your trading strategy change if 120k BTC is withdrawn from 1DkyBEKt5S2GDtv7aQw6rQepAvnsRyHoYM tomorrow?
- ...
- ...
Anyone want to show of their impressive "bitcoin forensics" skills? Has anyone else pondered these matters?
Added September 10. 2012:1DkyBEKt5S2GDtv7aQw6rQepAvnsRyHoYM came with BTCST, disappeared along with BTCST.
I assume this is (one of?) Pirate's wallets, and the main "Savings" part of BTCST.
I anticipated ~500K to be the balance of BTCST based on the premise that 1DkyBEK belongs to pirate before pirate himself claimed BTCST to be around 500K.
I predict you'll start noticing 1DkyBEK behaving quite differently after Aug. 17 than it has in the preceeding months up to Pirate closing shop.
The movements of July 17 were at the time unprecedented and would be an outlier, but have also been claimed by pirate himself.
If 1DkyBEK grows at a similar pace in the upcoming months, or eclipses the height of its former glory, my main premise will be proven wrong.
In a few weeks or months, not days, we can make a judgement. I think it's Pirate, if I'm wrong, we'll be able to tell soon enough.
Final Balance: 0.17055187 BTCLive balance chart on blockchain.info:
https://blockchain.info/charts/balance?address=1DkyBEKt5S2GDtv7aQw6rQepAvnsRyHoYMShow's over. Thanks for watching. Special thanks to bitcoin forensics crack
znort987 for his analysis.