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

[25/9/2024]
Five miner wallets that received block rewards weeks after Bitcoin launched have started moving their coins.
Bitcoin’s price movements in the last seven days. Source: CoinGecko

 

Former Bitcoin miners whose wallets received Bitcoin as rewards shortly after pseudonymous inventor Satoshi Nakamoto launched the blockchain were recently spotted moving their Bitcoins. On September 20, five miner wallets began to emerge, each holding 50 Bitcoins ( Bitcoin Ticker: $64,358

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. 

Given the BTC was mined only weeks after the launch of the Bitcoin blockchain, the wallets likely belonged to people present at its inception.

Mined Bitcoin goes from $0 to $15.9 million 

When the 250 BTC in the wallets was first mined, it wasn’t worth much, if anything. However, Bitcoin reached $1 in 2011 on the now-defunct crypto exchange Mt. Gox, and months later, Nakamoto bid farewell to the crypto space and expressed a desire to move on to other projects. 

Georges