Ancient Bitcoin Wallet Stirs After 13 Years of Dormancy, Sparking Satoshi Speculation

The crypto tracker Whale Alert notes that the address moved 33.99 BTC to two separate wallets.

An ancient Bitcoin wallet just shifted more than $2.1 million in BTC after 13 years lying dormant.

According to crypto tracker Whale Alert, the address moved 33.99 BTC to two separate wallets.

The move marks the whale’s first known activity since June 18th, 2011, when that same trove of Bitcoin was valued at just $584.

Transactions from long-dormant wallets tend to pique media interest, largely due to speculation that the BTC might belong to Bitcoin’s enigmatic creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.

Blockchain analysts surmise that Nakamoto mined one million BTC, beginning with the 50 BTC reward for the genesis block on January 3rd, 2009. Nakamoto’s involvement with the Bitcoin project concluded in mid-2011.

The last known public sighting of Satoshi was in December 2010 on the BitcoinTalk online forum, where the pseudonymous creator discussed a Bitcoin software update to prevent denial-of-service attacks.

The dormant wallet flagged by Whale Alert has received small amounts of Bitcoin on a few occasions over the last 13 years, but those transactions are likely the result of dusting attacks.

Dusting attacks involve hackers or scammers sending tiny amounts of a cryptocurrency (dust) to a large number of personal wallets in an attempt to breach the privacy of the wallet holders.

The scammers then attempt to follow the transactional activity of targeted wallets to uncover the individuals or entities behind them.