Yesterday, 100 bitcoin that had been at a standstill since 2010 were moved.
This was reported by Documenting Bitcoin on Twitter who commented as follows:
“That means someone held on to these #bitcoin since 2010, while their value went from literally $0 to $5 million. A legend”.
100 #bitcoin just moved for the first time in a decade.
That means someone held on to these #bitcoin since 2010, while their value went from literally $0 to $5 million. A legend. pic.twitter.com/ZCRmv7I7fq
— Documenting ₿itcoin 📄 (@DocumentingBTC) February 24, 2021
In fact, examining the address 1KVSHCm5GG3ai6LtLpPM52vm4VfH3haggT for example, it turns out that it only has three transactions.
One from June 11th, 2010, when it collected 50 BTC as a reward for mining a block, and two more from February 2021 in which those 50 BTC were sent to another address.
Going back in time, the earliest known price for a bitcoin exchange in dollars was in August 2010, when that price was $0.07.
Thus in June 2010, there was in fact still no ‘market price’ for bitcoin. In other words, the value of BTC in dollars at that time was approximately zero, as the only way to find someone willing to buy them was to try to contact them directly.
Taking the $0.07 of August 2010 as a reference, those 50 BTC to date would have yielded an incredible 72,000,000%, going from $3.5 to $2.5 million.
Large bitcoin transaction moved from Coinbase
But yesterday there was also another very interesting transaction.
It was reported by Bitcoin Archive on Twitter, and it was 13,383 BTC moved from Coinbase to a cold wallet.
That’s about $653 million actually leaving the market and ending up in a wallet presumably for long-term storage.
$653m #Bitcoin was just moved from Coinbase to cold storage.
Another 13,383 #Bitcoin off the market. 🐳🐳🐳
— Bitcoin Archive (@BTC_Archive) February 24, 2021
While the first report reveals that someone may be ready to put long-dormant BTC back on the market, the other reveals that someone is buying them for long-term storage, effectively taking them off the market.
However, there are not many bitcoin that have been idle for a decade that are being put back into circulation, and transactions like the one reported by Documenting Bitcoin are quite rare. On the other hand, there are plenty of bitcoin being bought and taken out of circulation, as evidenced by the many large purchases by companies such as Square and MicroStrategy who are buying in order to conserve over the medium to long term.
