Crypto mystery: Who moved 600 Bitcoins from 2010?

Before Bitcoin was traded on exchanges, before anyone paid 10,000 coins for two pizzas, and before its market value reached trillions of dollars, someone turned on a computer in March 2010 and mined 12 blocks on the young network.

Over the weekend, the Bitcoins received for that work moved for the first time in more than 16 years.

In total, 600 Bitcoins were transferred from 12 addresses, 50 coins from each. According to data from Whale Alert and Arkham, the pattern of mining and transfers reinforces the estimate that all the addresses belong to the same early miner. At a current Bitcoin price of about $79,500 the total value stands at about $47.7 million

What makes the story unusual is not just the amount, but the age of the coins.

The Bitcoins were mined in early March 2010, months before an organized market price for Bitcoin began to form. At that time, it was possible to participate in mining using a standard computer CPU, and the reward for each block was 50 Bitcoins. Today, after four halving events, the reward is just 3.125 Bitcoins.

The fact that the coins come from the “Satoshi era” immediately raised the obvious question: Has the creator of Bitcoin himself started moving coins?

According to data from Whale Alert, the answer is likely negative. The company examined the 12 blocks and stated that its research found no connection between them and the mining activity attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto.

Here, too, the blockchain provides facts but not intentions. The coins were transferred to new addresses and were not identified as going directly to an exchange. Therefore, there is currently no basis to determine that the miner intends to sell. It is possible that this is a security upgrade, a transition to a modern address format, a reorganization of holdings, or preparation for a future move. One of the transfers was executed slightly before the others, a pattern that also fits a test transaction before transferring a large sum.

The event joins an interesting phenomenon from recent weeks. Between August 16 and August 26, another 553.6 Bitcoins moved from six wallets that had been inactive since 2011 to 2014. However, Galaxy Research emphasizes that movement of old coins is not necessarily a sale, and from a broad perspective, the dormant Bitcoin waking up in 2026 remains significantly lower than that recorded in 2025.

A transfer of $48 million sounds huge, but relative to the Bitcoin market, it is small. Bitcoin is currently trading around $79,500, with a market cap of about $1.59 trillion and daily volume of about $23 billion.

Therefore, the story is significant mainly from a historical and psychological standpoint. Someone who was there almost at the beginning, when Bitcoin was a tiny internet experiment, still holds their keys 16 years later.

And now, for the first time since 2010, they have begun moving the money. The really interesting question is not who they are, but what they plan to do with it now.

Source: www.jpost.com