This OG Bitcoin Investor Just Turned $120 Into $178M

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A bitcoin (BTC) whale moved 2,000 BTC, worth $178 million, to Coinbase after holding their stash since 2010, Mempool data shows.
The user first received BTC in 2010, when the asset was worth just $0.06 per coin and had a market cap of around $250,000. Trading volume at the time rarely topped $60,000 per day.
Inflows to an exchange typically suggest that the BTC will be liquidated. The transfer follows a trend of dormant bitcoin wallets becoming active in light of the recent market-wide price surge after Donald Trump’s U.S. election win earlier this month. Glassnode shows a recent uptick in wallets that have been inactive for more than five years, with the figure reaching a two-month high.
Bitcoin is currently trading at $88,532 after cooling off from a rally that saw it set a record high of $93,214 on Wednesday.
This is not the first time older wallets have woken up as bitcoin started to hit new all-time highs this year. There have been at least two instances this year where millions of BTC from a period of late 2009 to 2011 called the “Satoshi Era” were moved from dormant wallets. Whether those bitcoin were sold is hard to gauge, but not impossible given the massive profits the users could reap at current prices.
The trend of more of the older wallets that held bitcoin from its early days coming out of the woodwork could continue, as they might be able to bag massive profits at current price levels. Such moves could limit any additional price upside, even though some traders are still optimistic that bitcoin could reach $100,000—a key psychological level of resistance—by year-end.
However, Chainalysis estimated that between 3-4 million BTC has been “lost forever” due to irretrievable private keys, meaning some of these “OG” wallets may never be able to cash out.
Edited by Aoyon Ashraf.
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Oliver Knight is a CoinDesk reporter based between London and Lisbon. He does not own any crypto.