Two Bitcoin (BTC) whales have come out of a long slumber and moved billions of dollars worth of the flagship crypto asset, according to on-chain data.
Blockchain tracking firm Lookonchain says the two Bitcoin addresses that each had 10,000 BTC were each emptied within minutes of each other on the 4th of July.
The two wallets had received their respective Bitcoin on April 3rd of 2011 when BTC was trading at $0.78 a piece. The value of the Bitcoin in the slightly older wallet had risen from $7,805 to $1,092,370,050.73 at the time of the transfer, a gain of 13,995,672%.
In the newer wallet, the value of the Bitcoin had jumped from $7,805 to $1,090,670,006.39, a 13,973,891% gain. The total value transferred from the ancient addresses adds up to $2,183,040,056.
Bitcoin is trading at $109,061 at time of writing.
While the wallets were dormant since April of 2011, they also received trace amounts of Bitcoin during the intervening period, possibly due to dusting attacks conducted to try to sniff out the entities behind the addresses. Dusting attacks are typically conducted by researchers, law enforcement officials or criminals.
The phenomenon of long-dormant addresses suddenly getting active spurs media interest due to their potential link to the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, who remains a mystery more than one and a half decades since the crypto king was introduced to the world.
The last known publicly verifiable online activity linked to Satoshi Nakamoto leads back to December of 2010 when the pseudonymous creator took to the BitcoinTalk forum to discuss a software update for Bitcoin meant to forestall denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.