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⚡Ancient Bitcoin Wallet Transfers $3.7M👜

Croxroad

21 Nov 2024 — 4 min read

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☯️ Bitcoin Wallet Comes Alive

An ancient Bitcoin wallet that had been dormant for over 13 years came to life this week, according to crypto tracker Lookonchain. The wallet received 426.3 BTC back on July 29, 2011, when the price of Bitcoin was just $13.49. At that time, the wallet’s total value was $5,753. However, after 13 years of inactivity, the wallet transferred 42.3 BTC, worth approximately $3.7 million at a price of $87,242 per Bitcoin. This resulted in an astonishing 646,616% return on the Bitcoin move.

The wallet, which still holds 384 BTC valued at around $34.7 million, isn't the only long-forgotten address to wake up in recent times. According to Whale Alert, another wallet moved one Bitcoin last week after more than 10 years of dormancy. The wallet still holds 24 BTC it received back in 2014. Similarly, a wallet that had remained inactive since 2013 moved 20 BTC this week, while another wallet from the same year transferred 67 BTC.

Bitcoin, which is currently trading at $89,831, recently hit an all-time high of $93,477. The cryptocurrency has seen impressive gains, rising nearly 2.5% in the past 24 hours and more than 19.5% over the past week. This surge in Bitcoin’s value has triggered a wave of dormant wallets to spring back into action, fueling further intrigue and excitement in the crypto space.

📶 Ilya Lichtenstein Gets Five Years in Prison

Ilya Lichtenstein, the mastermind behind a 2016 hack of the Bitfinex exchange that drained nearly 120,000 Bitcoin, was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in a complex money laundering operation designed to hide the stolen cryptocurrency. At the time of the hack, the stolen Bitcoin was worth about $70 million, but its value has soared to $10.5 billion due to the rise in Bitcoin’s price. Lichtenstein, who pled guilty in August 2023 along with his wife Heather Rhiannon Morgan, admitted to executing the cyberattack and subsequently laundering the funds through more than 2,000 unauthorised transactions.

Lichtenstein's actions made him one of the largest money launderers in the cryptocurrency world. Prosecutors described his laundering techniques as some of the most intricate ever encountered by the government. Despite facing a maximum sentence of 20 years, Lichtenstein received a five-year prison term and three years of supervised release, along with credit for the 29 months he had already served. He could be released in less than two years with good behaviour. Meanwhile, Morgan, who prosecutors deem a "lower-level participant," is expected to be sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Since their arrest in February 2022, the couple’s stolen Bitcoin has been partially recovered, with over 94,000 BTC seized by the Department of Justice. At the time of their arrest, the crypto was valued at $3.6 billion but is now worth approximately $8.3 billion. The government plans to return most, if not all, of the stolen Bitcoin to Bitfinex and potentially its other rightful owners through restitution.

🔑 Satoshi Nakamoto’s PGP Key

The creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, used a PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) key to sign messages and software releases. This key remains active today and is often used by researchers to prove that Satoshi’s identity has not been hijacked, though the original creator has never come forward.

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“Satoshi Nakamoto’s use of PGP keys to sign his work is a statement about Bitcoin’s integrity and the trustless nature of the system.”

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