Bitcoin Miner From Network’s Earliest Months Is Sending BTC to Kraken

An early bitcoin (BTC) whale who mined the asset in its infancy in 2009 has transferred a portion of its holdings to crypto exchange Kraken after a decade of dormancy, data from on-chain tool Arkham shows.

The whale, a colloquial term for entities holding a large amount of bitcoin, holds bitcoin mined just one month after the network first went live. It sent 5 BTC to Kraken earlier Tuesday, worth just over $300,000 at current prices.

Arkham said the whale moved bitcoin several times from 2011 to 2014 to other wallets or exchanges, after which there was no activity on the wallet for nearly ten years. Its bitcoin holdings increased in value from $474,000 to over $80 million in that period.

The wallet first started moving bitcoin to Kraken three weeks ago and has moved 10 BTC so far in three separate transactions. Moving a high value of tokens to an exchange is typically seen as an indication of selling for cash, stablecoins or other tokens.

Late last week, another “Satoshi Era” bitcoin wallet showed activity for the first time in 15 years, sending $16 million worth of BTC to several different wallets.

Satoshi era refers commonly to the period when bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, was active on online forums from late 2009 to 2011.

Several “Satoshi era” bitcoin have been active in the past few years. In July 2023, a wallet dormant for 11 years transferred $30 million worth of the asset to other wallets, while in August, another wallet transferred 1,005 BTC to a new address. Then, in December last year, over 1,000 BTC were sent to crypto exchanges – where they were likely sold off – marking one of the largest amounts from the Satoshi era moved to exchanges.