Wallets belonging to the first Bitcoin miners, who received Tokens as rewards shortly after the blockchain was launched by its anonymous founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, have recently been observed moving those Tokens.
On September 20, five mining wallets that received 50 Bitcoins each as block rewards in 2009 began moving their coins. Blockchain data shows that one wallet received its mining reward on January 29, 2009, while three others received their block rewards on January 31, 2009. Meanwhile, the last wallet received its block reward on February 2, 2009.
The Bitcoin blockchain went live on January 3, 2009, when Nakamoto mined the genesis block and embedded a message that referenced a headline from the UK newspaper The Times. On January 9, 2009, the Bitcoin founder explained the basics of the protocol, including how to mine and send money.
Mining just weeks after the Bitcoin blockchain launched shows these wallets belong to people who were present at its inception.
250 Bitcoin from 0 to $15.9 million
When those 250 BTC were first mined, they were worth nothing. However, Bitcoin finally hit $1 in 2011 on the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox. A few months later, Bitcoin’s founder left the cryptocurrency space and expressed his desire to move on to other projects.
Fast forward to 2024, and these tokens are now worth around $15.9 million. According to CoinGecko, BTC is trading at around $63,000 per token, hitting its highest price in September.
Cryptocurrency Community Reacts to BTC Migration
As BTC movements were flagged, community members speculated about who was moving the tokens. One user, X, thought someone had “found an old hard drive” and won the lottery after finding the Bitcoin, while another user fantasized that it might have been someone who had been in a “coma” and woke up with millions of dollars.
Meanwhile, some users think that these wallets may belong to Nakamoto or American software developer Hal Finney. The world's first Bitcoin transaction took place on January 12, 2009, when the Bitcoin creator sent 10 BTC to Finney, one of the pioneers of Bitcoin.
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