Bitcoin miner moves $3 million of BTC that sat untouched for nearly 14 years

An amount of 50 bitcoin ($3.3 million) that had sat untouched for nearly 14 years moved earlier today, suggesting an early Bitcoin BTC +0.92% miner is either consolidating their wallets or cashing in.

The bitcoin was mined in April 2010, as noticed by onchain analysts Lookonchain, when the mining reward for each block was 50 BTC (these days it's a little over 6 BTC and about to drop even lower). The wallet saw little activity from them on, only receiving a tiny amount of bitcoin in 2020, typically called "dust." This changed at around 3 a.m. ET today, when a transaction was made, moving 17 BTC ($1.1 million) to one wallet and 33 BTC ($2.2 million) to another.

The amount of 17 BTC was sent to a wallet that regularly moves funds out of the wallet after they have been sent there. This means it could be a recipient wallet for an exchange. From there, the bitcoin was combined with funds from other wallets labeled as Coinbase on the blockchain intelligence platform Arkham and moved to another address. This suggests this bitcoin may have been sent to the exchange.

The movement of 33 BTC went to a new wallet with no previous activity. It's possible that this bitcoin effectively remained in the miner's same wallet under a new address. This is because the Bitcoin blockchain requires all funds in the wallet to be moved for each transaction, with any funds that are not supposed to go anywhere new sent back to the same place. This is often done under a new address in order to make it harder to see which part of the transaction was the actual movement of funds.

This is the latest in some recent movements of older bitcoin. On March 23, the fifth richest Bitcoin address (at the time) moved bitcoin worth $6 billion to three new addresses. A week later, a bitcoin wallet that had been inactive for nearly 12 years transferred its entire 500 BTC — then worth just under $35 million — to multiple new addresses.