Bitcoin has been climbing higher for the past four days but has now fallen below $9,500. This means that bitcoin has lost almost $1000 in 24 hours from Tuesday’s highs. A so-called “bitcoin whale” transferred a large number of bitcoins from a decade ago, causing the sudden sell-off that sent the cryptocurrency market lower.
A large bitcoin holder transferred 50 bitcoin bitcoins, valued at more than $500,000, from an off-exchange account that had been inactive for over 11 years. According to a Twitter account that tracks bitcoin and cryptocurrency whales, the transaction was one-time, but the coins were split into two addresses.
This incident was not only a result of the increased supply but also led speculations that Satoshi Nakamoto may have kept the bulk of his coins in the wallet.
It’s unclear who the mysterious wallet owner is and why he didn’t want to touch his cryptocurrency stash. It’s difficult to understand why he felt the sudden need to cash in, given what little information is available. No matter his ambitions, a man who seems to have cheaply mined blocks from the network’s inception, the last thing that he needs is bitcoin glut.
Bitcoin’s price is down almost 3 percent in the last 24 hours trading period. However, it is up about twice as much as a year ago, when it started a recovery effort following a horrible 2018 that saw all cryptocurrencies lose approximately 80 percent of their value.
