Bitcoin miner wallets awaken after over 15 years — Is this Satoshi?

Wallets belonging to early Bitcoin miners, who received tokens as rewards shortly after the blockchain’s launch by its pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, have recently been observed moving those tokens.

On Sept. 20, five miner wallets that received 50 Bitcoin ( BTC ) each as block rewards in 2009 started to move their funds. Blockchain data shows that one wallet received the mining reward on Jan. 29, 2009, while three received the block rewards on Jan. 31, 2009. Meanwhile, the last wallet received the block rewards on Feb. 2, 2009.

One of the Bitcoin wallets seen moving mined BTC. Source: Blockchain.com

The Bitcoin blockchain went live on Jan. 3, 2009, when Nakamoto mined the genesis block and embedded a message referencing a headline published by The Times newspaper in the United Kingdom. On Jan. 9, 2009, the Bitcoin creator explained the protocol’s basics, including how to mine and send coins. 

Being mined only weeks after the launch of the Bitcoin blockchain suggests that the wallets belonged to people present at its inception.

250 Bitcoin goes from $0 to $15.9 million 

When the 250 BTC tokens were first mined, they were not worth anything. However, Bitcoin eventually reached $1 in 2011 at the now-defunct crypto exchange Mt. Gox . Months later, the Bitcoin creator bid farewell to the crypto space and expressed a desire to move on to other projects. 

Bitcoin’s price movements in the last seven days. Source: CoinGecko

Fast forward to 2024, the tokens are now worth about $15.9 million. According to CoinGecko, BTC trades at about $63,000 per token, its highest price in September. 

Related: Watch these BTC price levels as Bitcoin taps $64K

Crypto community reacts to BTC movements

As the BTC movements were flagged, community members speculated who was moving the tokens. One X user thinks that someone “found their old hard drive” and hit the lottery after seeing the Bitcoin, while another user imagines that it could be someone who was in a “coma” and woke up as a millionaire. 

Source: kaymyg

Meanwhile, some users think the wallets may belong to Nakamoto or the American software developer Hal Finney. The world’s first Bitcoin transaction took place on Jan. 12, 2009. This was when the creator of Bitcoin sent 10 BTC to Finney, one of the earliest adopters of Bitcoin.

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