Unidentified wallet sent $1.19 million in Bitcoin to Satoshi Nakamoto’s Genesis address
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On January 5, an unidentified individual initiated a transaction to deposit 26.9 BTC (worth approximately $1.19 million) into the Genesis wallet – an anonymous entity under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in Bitcoin. (BTC) first wallet created on the network.
this trade The event, which occurred at 1.52am ET, two days after Bitcoin celebrated its 15th anniversary, is noteworthy because it cannot be recovered.
On-chain analytics platform Arkham Intelligence reports that the owner of the mysterious wallet funded the bitcoin through a complex transaction involving different addresses before depositing it into the Genesis wallet.
Arkham Intelligence also revealed that it traced most of the funds to wallets believed to be owned by Binance.
Just before the transfer to Satoshi Nakamoto’s wallet, the mysterious sender withdrew nearly 27 BTC from the Binance exchange, and the wallet’s activity log only recorded these two transactions.
Given that cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance are legally required to have strict KYC procedures, some believe that Binance’s compliance team may know the identity of individuals transferring funds to Satoshi Nakamoto’s wallet.
Coinbase director Conor Grogan responded to the news, commenting humorously: “Either Satoshi Nakamoto woke up and bought 27 Bitcoins from Binance and deposited them into a wallet, or someone $1 million burned.”
The brainchild of Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous inventor of Bitcoin, the Genesis wallet has mainly collected trivial dust transactions since its launch on January 3, 2009.
While it is theoretically possible that Satoshi Nakamoto still had the private keys to these wallets and could transfer funds, this is widely considered to be extremely unlikely.
Evidence supporting this belief is that funds from Satoshi-related wallets, including those from the genesis block, have remained unchanged since the Bitcoin inventor disappeared in December 2010.
Initially, when Satoshi disappeared, the Genesis wallet had 50 BTC. However, over the years, the wallet witnessed inflows, reaching 72 BTC by the end of 2023.This latest transaction increases the funds in this wallet balance to approximately 99.68 BTC, which is equivalent to approximately US$4.3 million at the current exchange rate.
Following this unexpected transaction, cryptocurrency enthusiasts came up with several theories about it.
Considering that it happened two days after Bitcoin’s 15th anniversary, some considered it to be a tribute to Bitcoin’s creator. Others speculated it could be a huge financial mistake or an expensive publicity stunt.
Meanwhile, some see this as an attempt to fan excitement ahead of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) expected approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF.
