In the absence of any news catalysis, since last Friday, cryptocurrencies such as Ripple, Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum have fallen sharply. At this time, the market has set its sights on a $720 million Bitcoin wallet.
According to CCN, a crypto wallet with $720 million in Bitcoin and an unknown owner awakened after four years of silence. In the past few weeks, the wallet has transferred more than $100 million to Bitfinex and Binance, which may have caused panic among other investors.
This mysterious wallet has 111,114 Bitcoins, equivalent to 0.52% of the total Bitcoin supply. The sudden transfer of these dormant funds may have a devastating effect on market price movements, as well as the Bitcoin price.
The user u/Sick_Silk of the Reddit website analyzed the transfer of these dormant encrypted coins since the end of August by tracking each transaction in detail on the blockchain. According to him, the owner of this mysterious Bitcoin ‘whale’ may come from two sources.
The first possibility is that the money is related to the ‘dark web market Silk Road’. The first post posted on the site on August 31 suggests that these mobile funds may be associated with billions of dollars in contraband in the ‘dark net’, including casual and prescription drugs, illegal weapons, erotic transactions, malware, Hacker services, various criminal activity guides and other black market goods and services.
However, after tracking, it does not seem to be linked to the wallet address of the ‘Dark Net Silk Road’ founder DPR was arrested, so either the FBI did not sell Go (the last auction was in January 2015), or someone else (with or without the ‘Silk Road’) can control the funds.
After another week of investigation, u/Sick_Silk proposed a second possibility: the funds are likely to come from an old wallet called Mt Gox.
He believes that Mt Gox’s cold wallet address has been confiscated or still owned by MtGox: MtGox filed for bankruptcy in February 2014, and one month later, the wallet funds were transferred in March 2014. These wallet move dates are very similar to the mobile date of the 200,000 BTCs lost by the former MtGox CEO on March 7, 2014
Bitcoin security expert WizSec also holds the same view and said on social media:
They later guessed it in the post. This is an old Bitcoin whale, MtGox, which has nothing to do with the dark wire.
u/ sick_silk believes that the flow of funds at least to some extent led to a fall in Bitcoin prices in August. To be sure, the wallet, which accounts for 0.52% of the Bitcoin supply, is enough to manipulate or undermine market stability. Since the posting, the wallet’s Bitcoin value has been reduced by about $80 million. And the Bitcoin price today is at $6363.92.