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In May 2026, someone deliberately destroyed 107 bitcoin — roughly $8.3 million — by sending them to a provably unspendable burn address.
Bitcoin educator Bennet has now published detailed blockchain analysis tracing the coins back through a decade of wallet activity.
Five wallets, one owner
On May 25, five near-identical transactions were confirmed in block 950,962, each sending bitcoin from a different legacy address to 1111111111111111111114oLvT2, a well-known burn address that now holds over 809 BTC across roughly 260,000 transactions.
None of the coins sent there will ever move again.
The five addresses were all first funded on the same day in April 2014, within twenty-five blocks of one another, when bitcoin traded around $364.
Blockchain intelligence firm Chainalysis found “strong indicators of common ownership” across all five wallets, and traced most of the funds back to Mt. Gox, suggesting the owner was an early adopter.
Bennet noted the wallets operated on what appeared to be a rotational basis:
“One would send bitcoin to the exchange until its activity stopped, then another would take over with transactions of a similar cadence and value.”
The $1 million round trip
One wallet stood out from the rest.
The address 16g5hMo…99bVQt received 20 BTC in April 2014, then sat dormant for nearly twelve years.
In March 2026, the entire balance moved to what Bennet described as:
“A custodian of some kind.”
Three weeks later, almost exactly the same amount came back — minus roughly $3 in fees — split across three payouts of 7, 7, and 6 BTC over consecutive days.
Seven weeks after the return, the coins were burned.
“The whole balance went out to what looks like an exchange hot wallet, and almost exactly the same amount came back three weeks later. Seven weeks after that, it was burned.”
A pattern of $10,400 transfers
A separate address among the five had been draining its 2014 stack through the same custodian since 2022, sending 19.6 BTC across 60 transactions.
The bitcoin amounts varied widely — from about 0.15 BTC to 0.62 BTC — but 58 of the 60 transfers fell within 10% of approximately $10,400 at the time they were sent.
Despite bitcoin’s price more than quadrupling over the period, the dollar amounts remained remarkably consistent.
“This suggests to me a planned liquidation strategy.”
The transfers also came in clusters rather than on a fixed schedule, which Bennet said was more consistent with someone sending fixed-dollar amounts when needed.
Why burn millions in bitcoin?
Bennet’s analysis rules out several common explanations.
Tax loss harvesting makes no sense — the coins were acquired at around $364 each, meaning the owner would have destroyed $8.3 million to write off roughly $39,000.
The custodian round trip also weighs against a simple trade gone wrong, since virtually the same amount of bitcoin came back to the same address.
Bennet raised one possibility that most coverage overlooked:
“There’s also the possibility that a very wealthy individual without heirs decided to permanently burn their coins, thereby publicly reducing the total bitcoin supply, rather than just destroying their keys.”
Chainalysis acknowledged the limits of on-chain analysis in this case:
“We don’t have a clear explanation for why the owner would move a long-dormant stash through a custodian, retrieve roughly the same amount, and then deliberately burn it.”
For now, the blockchain provides an unusually detailed record of what happened — but not why.
Source: bitbo.io