On January 5, an anonymous person started a transaction by adding 26.9 Bitcoin (BTC) to the Genesis wallet, which was the first wallet the anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto ever created on the Bitcoin (BTC) network. The wallet is estimated to be worth $1.19 million.
Two days after Bitcoin celebrated its 15th anniversary, at 1.52 AM ET, a transaction happened that was notable because it could not be reversed.
The owner of the mysterious wallet funded it through complex transactions involving multiple addresses prior to placing the Bitcoins into the Genesis wallet, according to on-chain analytics provider Arkham Intelligence.
Additionally, Arkham Intelligence disclosed that it had tracked the majority of the assets to a wallet that Binance is thought to be the owner of.
The unidentified sender took out over 27 BTC from the Binance exchange just before the transfer to the Satoshi Nakamoto wallet; the wallet’s activity log only shows these two transactions.
Some people think the Binance compliance team may be aware of the identity of the person who made the transfer to Nakamoto’s wallet because the law mandates that cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance have strict KYC policies.
“Either Satoshi woke up, bought 27 Bitcoins from Binance, and deposited them into their wallet, or someone just burned a million dollars,” jokingly remarked Coinbase director Conor Grogan in response to the news.
Either Satoshi woke up, bought 27 bitcoin from Binance, and deposited into their wallet, or someone just burned a million dollars pic.twitter.com/w34kjnAHPJ
— Conor (@jconorgrogan) January 6, 2024
Since its creation on January 3, 2009, the Genesis wallet—which is credited to the anonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto—has mostly accumulated insignificant dust transactions.
Although it’s technically feasible that Nakamoto still has access to these wallets’ private keys and could move the money, most people think it’s extremely unlikely.
The fact that money from accounts connected to Nakamoto, including the funding for the Genesis block, have remained unchanged since the founder of Bitcoin vanished in December 2010 is evidence in favor of this theory.
Initially, the Genesis wallet contained 50 BTC when Nakamoto disappeared. Nonetheless, the wallet has seen a cash influx over time, and by the end of 2023, it will have 72 BTC. The wallet’s balance has climbed to about 99.68 BTC, or about $4.3 million at the current exchange rate, thanks to this most recent transaction.
Following this surprising transaction, many explanations have been proposed by cryptocurrency aficionados.
Given that it happened two days after Bitcoin was 15 years old, some people think it is a memorial to the person who created the cryptocurrency. Some others think it might be an expensive publicity trick or a huge financial error.
However, others see it as a ploy to create a frenzy in anticipation of the expected approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
