A mysterious deposit of 26.9 BTC has been added to the Genesis wallet. The bitcoins, worth around US$1.2 million at current valuations, were transferred to Satoshi Nakamoto’s first cryptocurrency wallet on Friday, January 5, at 1.52am ET. Since “Mr. Nakamoto” is missing and there have been no transfers from this or any of his other known properties since 2010, the large deposit has raised many eyebrows and sparked heated debate.
Genesis’ deposit of 26.9 BTC came from a wallet that was funded through a series of fairly complex transactions. Three wallets moved the funds to 12 wallets, and the funds were then pooled together into a single wallet that appeared to belong to Binance, according to blockchain analytics platform Arkham Intelligence. That last wallet in the donor chain was emptied into “Satoshi 1,” the Genesis wallet.
Deposited Bitcoin has taken a very indirect route, even for cryptocurrencies, and being dropped into what appears to be a monetary black hole makes it an even stranger transaction. As noted in the introduction, Nakamoto’s funds were effectively abandoned for more than a decade.
The Genesis wallet now contains nearly 100 bitcoins, worth more than $4.3 million. At the time of Nakamoto’s disappearance, it contained 50 bitcoins, rising to 72 bitcoins in late 2023. However, this pseudonymous entity is believed to control several digital wallets representing up to 1.1 million bitcoins, and thus a fortune estimated at $43. one billion.
Let’s go over some of the reasons behind this 26.9 BTC deposit. Most of the speculation we’ve seen concerns a party wanting to unload illegally acquired gains. Variations on this theory involve someone apparently “burning” these bitcoins to prove they are serious about some blackmail or extortion type scheme. There are also theories including classic pump-and-dump schemes, or it’s a crazy Bitcoin marketing ploy, or the act of a jilted lover…
Bitcoin is currently worth $44,400. After struggling to break above the $30,000 mark for several months, it finally saw a strong and sustained level of recovery starting in late October. The reactivation of the popular cryptocurrency is believed to be due to expectations that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will give the green light to BTC-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs).