Bitcoin wallet from Satoshi era mysteriously activates after 11 years

Your support helps us to tell the story

Support Now

Find out moreClose

As your White House correspondent, I ask the tough questions and seek the answers that matter.

Your support enables me to be in the room, pressing for transparency and accountability. Without your contributions, we wouldn't have the resources to challenge those in power.

Your donation makes it possible for us to keep doing this important work, keeping you informed every step of the way to the November election

Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

A bitcoin wallet that has been dormant since the time that the cryptocurrency’s anonymous creator was still active online has suddenly activated.

The wallet was last used on 17 May, 2010, less than one year before the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto sent their final emails to fellow crypto developers.

Follow The Independent’s live coverage of bitcoin and the rest of the crypto market

The 50 bitcoins contained within the wallet were worth less than $4 when they were last used 11 years ago. Bitcoin’s astonishing price gains since then mean the funds are now worth more than $3 million at today’s rates.

The semi-anonymous nature of bitcoin means it is possible to track transactions on the public blockchain, however it is not possible to link them to an individual or group.

It is not the first time a so-called “sleeping whale” has awoken this year, with a similar sum from the same time period moved back in July.

The 50 bitcoins acquired at that time come from the mining reward size, which was 50 BTC per block at that time.

Last month, a bitcoin wallet containing 616 BTC also activated after not being used for nearly nine years.

Bitcoin’s underlying technology means only 21 million bitcoins will ever exist, however several million have been stuck in decades-old wallets whose access keys may have been lost or forgotten forever.

The most valuable dormant wallet currently contains nearly 80,000 BTC – roughly $5 billion at current exchange rates.

The cumulative sum held in bitcoin addresses that have been dormant for more than nine years is well in excess of $20 billion, according to data from BitInfoCharts.

This is nearly 2 per cent of bitcoin’s entire market cap, while recent analysis from crypto market intelligence firm Glassnode estimated that roughly one third of all bitcoins are owned by long-term holders.