Crypto tracker Whale Alert is revealing that a Bitcoin (BTC) wallet just moved more than $23 million worth of the flagship cryptocurrency after lying dormant for over a decade.
According to Whale Alert, the sleeping giant moved 500 BTC to an unknown wallet. The 500 Bitcoin has appreciated by approximately 280,200% since July of 2011.
“A dormant address containing 500 BTC (23,665,502 USD) has just been activated after 10.5 years (worth 8,425 USD in 2011)!”
Bitcoin is trading at $46,903 at time of writing.
Long-dormant wallets generate interest once they suddenly become active due to the possibility that they could be owned by the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto.
The last known publicly-verifiable online sighting of Satoshi was in December of 2010 when the client software for the Bitcoin network was in version 0.3.19. Currently, Bitcoin is in version 22.0.
In his last message, Satoshi indicated that he was “venturing into more complex ideas” after releasing an upgrade meant to assist the Bitcoin network’s client software to withstand denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. However, Satoshi expressed worries that Bitcoin was still vulnerable to DoS attacks despite the updates.
While the dormant wallet is only coming alive after approximately 10 years and five months of inactivity, it has received trace amounts of Bitcoin over the years. The trace amounts of Bitcoin could suggest that dusting attacks have taken place during the dormancy period.
Dusting attacks are carried out by cybercriminals, blockchain researchers, tax and other law enforcement agencies, or other entities who send out small amounts of crypto to wallet addresses hoping to unmask the owner.
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