A Bitcoin whale who mined cryptocurrency in the earliest days of the network has recently become active after nearly a decade of dormancy.
According to data from blockchain intelligence firm Arkham , this early miner has sent a portion of their holdings to the Kraken exchange.
Early Bitcoin miners’ wallet wakes up after 10 years
Arkham reported that the wallet contains Bitcoin mined during February and March 2009. This places the origin of these coins just one month after Bitcoin’s launch.
The whale’s wallet still holds 1,215 BTC. It is valued at approximately $77 million at current market prices. After remaining inactive for almost 10 years, the whale has shown signs of life in the past few weeks.
Over the last three weeks, the whale has executed three separate transactions, moving a total of 10 BTC to the Kraken exchange. The most recent transaction involved sending 5 BTC to Kraken.
“After moving several times from 2011-2014, his Bitcoin was then held dormant for almost 10 YEARS straight – during which it increased in value from $474K to over $80M,” Arkham stated about the surge in value.
Trend of dormant Bitcoin whales becoming active
This activity follows a pattern of early Bitcoin miners becoming active after long periods of inactivity. Just days earlier, Arkham identified another early whale who moved $16 million worth of BTC after 15 years of dormancy.
In a separate event, Arkham reported that some of the earliest ever Bitcoin mining addresses have woke up.
The wallet moved $15.95M of BTC (250 BTC) from 5 addresses active in the first month of Bitcoin’s existence, January 2009. These addresses had each received 50 BTC for mining blocks in the 2000-2700 range.
The exact reason for the surge in dormant BTC whales remains uncertain. The movement comes amidst the recent surge in Bitcoin’s price above $63,000. BTC went as high as $64,996 but fell to its current price of $63,100. The Bitcoin price is up by over 4% in the last seven days, as per CoinMarketCap data .
