The cryptocurrency market is abuzz as several OG wallets—long-dormant wallets—suddenly spring back to activity. These veteran “whales” are sparking numerous speculations: are they preparing for large-scale profit-taking, or could this signal the return of Satoshi Nakamoto?
On the morning of July 24, a Bitcoin wallet created in January 2011, when BTC was just $0.37, executed a transaction. This wallet sent 0.0018 BTC before transferring a total of 3,962 BTC (worth approximately $468 million) to a new address. According to Arkham, this wallet received all its BTC in the early days of 2011 and had been “silent” for 14 years.
Data from bitinfocharts confirms that the old address (15MZv…HjFUz) has transferred funds to the new address (bc1qc…udryz). With the current BTC price, the asset value has increased over 320,000 times since its inception!
This isn’t the only case. On July 23, another old Bitcoin wallet transferred 10,603 BTC (valued at $1.26 billion) after a long period of dormancy. Previously, another OG wallet transferred 40,191 BTC to a custody unit of Galaxy Digital.
These actions have caused a stir in the crypto community. Many believe that these “whales” are adjusting their positions to take profits as BTC nears its all-time high (currently at $116,069). However, BTC’s upward momentum is slowing due to market correction pressures.
Some bold speculations suggest that this could be a sign of Satoshi Nakamoto’s return, as early wallets thought to belong to Satoshi or early miners suddenly become active.
According to Conor Grogan, Director at Coinbase, at least one of these wallets belongs to a solo miner from the Satoshi era. At that time, Bitcoin mining was much easier, with block rewards of up to 50 BTC compared to the current rate of 3.125 BTC per block.