Profit of 183 million USD after 14 years of holding Bitcoin

A “whale” investor just transferred 2,000 Bitcoin (BTC) to Coinbase after keeping it in their wallet for 14 years since 2010. This is according to data collected by Mempool – a virtual waiting room for transactions that have not yet entered the chain (block) – recorded on November 15.

This investor first received Bitcoin in 2010, when the digital currency was worth just $0.06 per coin and had a market capitalization of about $250,000. Trading volume at that time rarely exceeded $60,000 per day.

Bringing tokens from a wallet into an exchange usually suggests that BTC will be liquidated. After a day of decline due to the strengthening of the USD, this morning Bitcoin traded around 91,500 USD per unit. Temporarily calculated at this market price, if the above whale investor successfully sells, he will make a profit of more than 183 million USD (nearly 4,650 billion VND) after 14 years, while the initial cost price is only about 120 USD (more than 3 million VND). .

The trend of “hibernating” Bitcoin wallets becoming active again became positive in the context of the recent surge in market prices after Donald Trump’s victory earlier this month. Glassnode noted an increase in wallets that have been inactive for more than five years has reached its highest level in the past two months.

This isn’t the first time dormant wallets have woken up as Bitcoin began hitting multiple all-time highs this year. There have been at least two cases this year where millions of BTC from the period late 2009 to 2011, known as the “Satoshi era” (the name of the father of Bitcoin), were transferred from dormant wallets to trading platform. Whether those Bitcoins will be sold or not is difficult to determine, but the probability remains very high given the huge profits that users can reap at current prices.

Group of experts of CoinDesk Forecasting the trend of many old wallets holding Bitcoin from the early days may continue to reactivate. However, such moves could limit the cryptocurrency’s upside, although some traders remain optimistic that Bitcoin could reach $100,000 – a key psychological resistance level – by the end of the year.

However, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis estimates that approximately 3-4 million BTC have been “permanently lost” due to unrecoverable private keys.

A wallet is an application or device used to store BTC, operating similarly to a bank account. The owner can access by entering the public key and private key. While the public key is similar to an account number, the private key is like a PIN code for a bank card and the investor is the only one who holds it. If forgotten, the wallet owner cannot restore the private key. Under these circumstances, the owner may never be able to withdraw the money from the wallet.