Ancient Whale Reemerges: Nearly $8.7 Billion Bitcoin Attracts Market Attention

Recently, a notable trend has emerged in the cryptocurrency market. A Bitcoin holder who had been inactive for 14 years suddenly became active, transferring approximately 80,000 Bitcoins, which has attracted widespread attention in the market.

According to on-chain data, since noon yesterday, 8 wallet addresses related to this long-silent Bitcoin holder have been activated one after another. These addresses can be divided into two batches: 2 addresses received 10,000 Bitcoins each on April 2, 2011, when the price of Bitcoin was only about $0.78; the other 6 addresses received a total of 60,009 Bitcoins on May 4, 2011, when the price of Bitcoin was $3.37.

Currently, all 80,009 Bitcoins from these 8 addresses have been transferred to 8 new addresses, each holding approximately 10,000 Bitcoins. At the current market price, the total value of this batch of assets is close to 8.7 billion USD. It is worth noting that these Bitcoins have not yet been transferred to any trading platform, but they have attracted significant market attention.

This batch of Bitcoin is enormous, accounting for approximately 13.4% of a well-known technology company's Bitcoin holdings and 6.35% of the known founder's address holdings. The cost price of these Bitcoins ranges from $0.78 to $3.37, and they have achieved an astonishing return of over 100,000 times to date. In contrast, the spot trading volume of a well-known trading platform in the past 24 hours is only about $1 billion.

According to other market data, the total amount of Bitcoin purchased by listed companies in the second quarter of 2025 is approximately 131,000 coins, while the net purchases of Bitcoin ETFs during the same period are about 111,000 coins, and last week’s daily net inflow was only a little over 2,000 coins. If this holder starts to sell in batches, the selling pressure released will far exceed any recent buying and selling activities of institutions, potentially having a significant impact on the market.

There are different speculations within the industry regarding the identity of this Bitcoin holder. An executive from a trading platform believes this could be a single miner from 2011. This miner integrated 180 mining reward blocks and had a wallet address containing 200,000 Bitcoins in 2011, which is currently valued at approximately $22 billion, making it one of the top five Bitcoin wallets of all time.

A data analyst also supports this view, believing that these transactions can be traced back to early block rewards, showing that they are consolidating different block rewards. Yesterday's transfer seems to be combining multiple smaller UTXOs with a larger UTXO (10,000 Bitcoins).

Regardless of the true identity of this Bitcoin holder, their next move will affect the market nerves. In the face of over 100,000 times paper profit, even the most steadfast Bitcoin supporters may waver. These 80,000 Bitcoins are like a "black swan" bomb that could explode the market at any time, potentially having a significant impact on the current market trend.