Some of the oldest mining wallets have awakened. Several early miners from the first stage of Bitcoin mining have moved their 50 BTC block rewards.
In a rare whale event, several long-dormant wallets have started moving their holdings. The coins were a part of the 50 BTC mining reward from the very early days of the Bitcoin network.
While it is not rare to see an old wallet move their coins, this time, as many as five entities have shifted their balances from known addresses.
All the addresses became active in the span of an hour, then moved to new CoinJoin address formats. Each of the transactions 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 moved exactly 50 BTC minus fees into brand-new wallets.
One of the wallets was last active on 02.02.2009, coinciding with the time when only a few miners produced blocks, together with Bitcoin’s founder, the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. Three of the addresses were created on January 31, and the oldest is from January 29, 2029.
For the last time, Satoshi era BTC was transferred about nine months ago, ending up in a hot wallet that now sits empty. But the recent transfer is the first series of transactions coming from several different addresses, created at different times. The addresses have not been flagged as wallets belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto, but may be linked to Hal Finey or other very early miners.
The BTC moved are different from Satoshi Nakamoto blocks
The early miner wallets solved BTC from the first 3,000 blocks, at the time when Satoshi Nakamoto was active and remained one of the biggest block producers.
One of the wallets, for instance, produced block 2,486, which deviates from the block header pattern noted on Satoshi’s mining. Satoshi was active with diminishing block production until block 50,000, leaving known blocks that have not moved their coins. The holdings are effectively diminishing the total supply of BTC.
Competitive miners already appeared in the fist few hundred blocks, though not all have been identified.
The miner coins moved just hours after another old wallet with a 13-year history moved 59 BTC. The coins were split into multiple transactions, with the latest one sent to Coinbase.
The old coins are not the only bounty from the early miners. Since their coins were recorded in the history of Bitcoin, they were also eligible to receive the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) hard fork.
The last miner that sent out coins still retains the 50 BCH block reward, valued at $16,992.51. All the addresses retain the forked assets, with no attempts to split the coins or move them. Those same BTC addresses could receive other hard forks, which are now mostly worthless.
Suspicions raised of cracked wallets or other exploit
The 250 BTC moved from the early miner wallets are not enough to sway the market in any way. Currently, exchanges can absorb even bigger selling, and whales are eager to accumulate.
However, there are fears of an exploit, as the senders made an attempt to hide the origin of coins, by splitting them into multiple small transactions, then joining the output.
The hacker scenario raises questions on why only five wallets were affected, and why the BCH was not drained as well. While the Bitcoin hashing algorithm cannot be cracked, early wallets can be stolen in other ways, including finding keystone files on old hard drives. Attacks against individual wallets also include direct attempts to steal keys, or malicious apps.
Early mining was also not taken as seriously, and some estimate up to 3M BTC may be forgotten or frozen. For BTC prices, this is a feature, not a bug, since it limits the already low supply of available coins.
The other possibility is that the early miners are in control of their wallets, but simply wanted to take some limited profits. Each block reward is worth more than $3.18M, even making the additional BCH reward irrelevant.
The coins moved just as BTC recovered briefly again to $64,000, while absorbing much bigger trades from whales. The recent rally suggests BTC itself is trying for a new peak in 2024, possibly breaking its previous record.
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Cryptopolitan reporting by Hristina Vasileva.
