In a first for the Bitcoin network, 20,000 BTC dormant since 14 years has suddenly moved. Here’s how much profit was involved in the transaction.
A Significant Amount Of Ancient Bitcoin Has Just Been Transferred
As explained by CryptoQuant community analyst Maartunn in a new post on X, there have been a couple of unprecedented transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain.
The transfers in question involved the movement of 20,000 BTC in two batches (that is, 10,000 tokens in each move) sitting dormant since 14.3 years ago. “This is never before witnessed in Bitcoin’s entire history,” notes Maartunn.
The data of the transfers older than 10 years | Source: @JA_Maartun on X
When the tokens involved in these moves were last transacted in April 2011, they were worth a total of $15,586. Today, they are worth upwards of $2.1 billion.
The size of the transfers in USD terms | Source: @JA_Maartun on X
This naturally suggests that with the move, the owner of the tokens has harvested an extraordinary amount of profit. More specifically, the move has realized a gain of almost 13.8 million percent.
An indicator that has registered a notable spike because of the dormancy-breaking transactions is the Bitcoin Coin Days Destroyed (CDD). A ‘coin day’ is a quantity that one token of the asset accumulates after being still on the blockchain for one day.
When a coin that has been dormant for some number of days is moved, its coin days counter resets back to zero and the coin days that it had been carrying are said to be ‘destroyed.’ The CDD measures the total number of coin days being reset in this manner across the network.
Naturally, the CDD is particularly sensitive to moves from the diamond hands of the Bitcoin market, as their tokens tend to carry a large number of coin days. The 20,000 BTC transactions from today are quite ancient, so it’s to be expected that they would register on the indicator.
Looks like the value of the metric has shot up during the past day | Source: @JA_Maartun on X
And indeed, as the chart for the metric displays, each of the two 10,000 BTC transfers involved the destruction of more than 52 million coin days. Thus, collectively, the moves have caused the CDD to reach over 104 million coin days.
Now, what could these moves mean for the Bitcoin market? Generally, when such ancient coins move, the motive is likely to be selling. In this particular case, however, the investor involved may not be a high-conviction holder. This is because coins that reach such an old age usually get there by becoming lost, either due to their existence being forgotten or having their keys misplaced.
As such, it’s probable that the tokens have only recently been rediscovered. Selling from holders carrying coins from a few years ago can be a sign of conviction breaking in the sector, but this particular move may not be it.
BTC Price
Bitcoin has retraced some of its latest recovery as its price has pulled back down to $107,900.
The price of the coin has overall moved sideways over the last five days | Source: BTCUSDT on TradingView
Featured image from Dall-E, CryptoQuant.com, chart from TradingView.com
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