An unknown Bitcoin user sent 26.9. BTC
+0.23%
$1.17 million worth of money was added to the network’s Genesis wallet, the first wallet created on the Bitcoin network, with little chance of getting it back.
The transaction took place on January 5th at 1:52 AM ET. Bitcoin was transferred from this now empty wallet to the Genesis wallet. The transaction fee was $100, well above average.
The wallet was originally funded through complex transactions that involved moving funds from three wallets to 12 other wallets. Most of the funds came from wallets labeled as belonging to Binance by blockchain analytics platform Arkham Intelligence.
“Either Satoshi woke up and bought 27 bitcoins on Binance and deposited them into his wallet, or someone just burned a million dollars,” said Conor Grogan, executive director at Coinbase. on.
What is Genesis Wallet?
The Genesis wallet is the first wallet created on the Bitcoin network. It was created by a pseudonymous group called Satoshi Nakamoto, who also created the Bitcoin network. Nakamoto also likely mined a large number of other blocks in the early days of the network, although it is unclear exactly how many.
In theory, Nakamoto could still hold the private keys to access these wallets and move or return funds, but the general consensus is that this is unlikely to happen. This is because funds in Nakamoto-related wallets, including funds stored in the Genesis block, have not been moved since Nakamoto disappeared in December 2010.
When Nakamoto disappeared, the Genesis wallet only contained 50 bitcoins mined at the time of creation. Over time, more funds were sent to the wallet, and by the end of 2023, the balance had grown to 72 bitcoins. With recent transactions, the current balance is 99.67 bitcoins, worth $4.3 million.
But this fell into Nakamoto’s bucket. Estimates suggest that they control 1.1 million Bitcoins, currently worth $47 billion on paper.
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