Bitcoin miner from 2009 sends BTC to Kraken

Another wallet with coins mined in the first two months after Bitcoin’s launch has just become active after being dormant for over a decade.

On Sept. 24, blockchain intelligence firm Arkham flagged a Bitcoin (BTC) whale wallet that had mined Bitcoin in February and March 2009. This means the miner was active in the very early days of Bitcoin’s launch, when the cryptocurrency space was in its infancy and BTC’s value was practically at $0.

After initial transactions in the first few years, the Satoshi-era wallet went dormant.

However, on-chain data shows the whale’s wallet has suddenly woken up. The wallet’s latest transaction is the movement of five bitcoins to the crypto exchange Kraken.

From $474k to over $80 million

According to Arkham, this suddenly active wallet still holds 1,215 BTC, worth over $77 million.

But when the whale last moved the coins in 2014, the total value of their holdings stood at around $474k. Over the past 10 years of holding, the BTC price has increased significantly, bringing the value to $80 million.

Incidentally, this whale has been active for about three weeks, with 10 BTC transferred to Kraken across three separate transactions so far.

As with other wallets created in those early years, this wallet mined when Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto was still mining coins and present in the ecosystem. Like other transactions involving wallet addresses from that era, this transfer has intrigued the BTC community.

Just last week, another Satoshi-era wallet woke, transferring nearly $16 million in BTC. This particular wallet had been dormant for over 15 years.

In August 2024, a dormant Bitcoin wallet from 2014 moved BTC worth over $10.2 million. Earlier, in June, a Bitcoin wallet inactive since 2010 moved $3 million in BTC to the crypto exchange Binance.