Reactivation of Five Bitcoin Miner Wallets Dating Back to 2009
The recent reactivation of five Bitcoin miner wallets dated back as far as 2009 has taken the entire cryptocurrency community by storm. Kept in hibernation for 15 years with 250 BTC inside, its current value using the market price is approximately $15.9 million.
Details of the Reactivated Wallets
According to on-chain data provider Lookonchain, all five wallets containing 50 BTC each were turned on within the hour on Friday. These five batches of coins were mined shortly after the launch of the BTC blockchain, which went live on January 3, 2009. One received its mining reward on January 29, 2009, three the following day on January 31, and the last on February 2, 2009.
Mining Rewards Before Bitcoin’s First Halving
When these wallets were active, the block reward for mining a block was 50 BTC, way more than the current 3.125 BTC reward after many halvings. At this time, Bitcoin had little to no value, but its subsequent surge in price has turned these coins into a sizeable fortune.
Speculation Over Who the Owners of the Wallets Are
The crypto community is rife with speculation that the owners of these wallets might be the person or persons behind Bitcoin-Satoshi Nakamoto-or early contributors such as Hal Finney, who received the first-ever Bitcoin transaction. Others think the explanation could be far more prosaic-someone dusting off an old hard drive containing the wallets, for instance.
Historical Patterns of Dormant Wallets Becoming Active
This isn’t the first time Satoshi-era BTC wallets, long considered dormant, suddenly became active. In June, a Satoshi era wallet transferred 50 BTC valued at $3.05 million to Binance after being inactive for 14 years. Last year, three whales moved 6,500 BTC after almost six years of inactivity, raising some eyebrows in the trading community.
Impact on Bitcoin’s Price
Although these miners’ wallet reactivations did not directly have an impact on the price of Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency has recently seen much growth. This week, Bitcoin surged more than 11%, from $57,600 to $64,000 and then down a little to $63,435 at the time of reporting. This rally seems to be attached to a recent decision by the Federal Reserve in the U.S. to cut interest rates by 50 basis points, which could mean a relaxation in monetary policy.
Save for the fact that it goes to show just how interesting these very early days of Bitcoin and its totally mysterious creator were, one of the most talked-about and disputed topics has been the re-emergence of those historic wallets.
