A dormant Bitcoin wallet belonging to the Satoshi era came back to life. The wallet, in question, is over 9 years old and currently holds 6,071 BTC, valued at $178 million, data from whale alert showed.
Also, out of the total 6,071 BTC, 2,071 BTC were moved.
The whale address’s nearly ten-year-old BTC reserves were only worth $3.3 million in 2013, with the first transaction taking place on December 19 and the most recent transaction on April 19.
The abrupt activation of a large-scale holder sparks intrigue and rumors about the identity of the wallet and why it did so.
According to one Twitter user, the mysterious whale might be the US government, which is also dumping BTC tokens that have been seized.
Court filings submitted a few weeks ago revealed that the Feds reportedly made almost $215 million when they sold the cryptocurrency earlier this month.
The stolen crypto originated from the Silk Road marketplace, where Hacker James Zhong admitted to taking it before being seized by police back in November. They are currently selling it, but according to the filing, they still have 41,490 Bitcoins worth $1.1 billion to get rid of.
The government is looking at methods to dispose of the leftover Bitcoin over the course of four separate batches in 2023.
More importantly, BTC Investors should be aware that the authorities’ impending steps may result in sell pressure in the near future.
Imminent Bitcoin Sell-Offs
Four significant dates have been identified by a top analytics platform, CryptoQuant, when there may be additional selling pressure due to the US government’s ownership of Bitcoin on those days. 26 May 2023, 7 August 2023, 19 October 2023, and 30 December 2023 are those dates.
However, it is best to view the rumors that the US government is the wallet’s owner as pure conjecture.
On the price front, data from Coinmarketcap showed that the bitcoin has fallen by over 5% in the last couple of days and is currently trading at $28934.
The world’s no 1 crypto is still down by 4% in the past 24 hours. Market Participants will keenly watch any subsequent movement from this whale address as well as the larger cryptocurrency market.
Tesla, one of the largest institutional Bitcoin investors, maintained its BTC holdings at $184 million for the second consecutive period, according to information from its most current balance sheet.