Bitcoin mined in March 2010 has moved for the first time in more than 16 years, briefly reviving speculation about a link to Satoshi Nakamoto.
Twelve mining rewards on the move
Twelve addresses holding a combined 600 BTC, worth about $48 million, sent the coins on Saturday after leaving them untouched since the day they were mined.
Whale Alert, which tracks large onchain transfers, said all 12 rewards came from blocks mined in March 2010, when each block still paid a 50 BTC block subsidy.
That reward has been cut in half four times since then, most recently in April 2024, when it fell from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.
No link to Satoshi
Whale Alert said its research ruled out Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator as the source of the coins.
A spokesperson for the platform told Cointelegraph:
“None of the blocks can be connected to Satoshi based on our research.”
The findings build on the platform’s earlier look at seven of the rewards, which it said in a Sunday X post also came from blocks Nakamoto did not mine.
Lookonchain had flagged those seven wallets first, noting they moved 350 BTC after 16.5 years of inactivity.
Satoshi-era, not Satoshi’s
The transfers drew attention because they date to a stretch when Nakamoto was still working on Bitcoin day to day.
Nakamoto stayed involved in development and public communication through 2010 before gradually stepping back, and the last known message attributed to the creator dates to April 2011.
Whale Alert also noted that one of the rewards moved several blocks ahead of the rest, a pattern it read as a test transaction sent before the larger batch of transfers.
