A Bitcoin wallet with BTC 111,114, worth around USD 800 million at current exchange rates, had been lying dormant since 2014 but recently became active according to an analysis from a Reddit user. A whole range of theories as to who is behind this wallet is cropping up. Some people think it’s Satoshi, others say it’s a wallet connected to the Silk Road. It’s possible this wallet is connected to Mt Gox or perhaps it’s just an anonymous whale investor.
From this old mega wallet, a total of USD 115 million was sent to crypto exchanges. Clearly, whoever owns this wallet has decided to cash out some of these Bitcoins or might be starting to actively trade. At the time the wallet was created four years ago, the Bitcoins were worth USD 71.5 million.
It has been speculated that around 4 million Bitcoins have been lost forever, and that sort of analysis usually just looks to see if wallets have been dormant for many years. This makes it questionable how many Bitcoins are really lost, since all of the big dormant wallets could just be people laying low and waiting for the right time to sell.
There is some speculation that the sudden re-activation of this wallet could cause a market downturn. However, there are billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin trading volume every day worldwide, and even if the Bitcoins from this wallet were all sold in a day it wouldn’t have a dramatic impact on the market. In reality, these Bitcoins are being sold slowly and many of them are still being held, so this will have no noticeable impact on the market.
This is a good example of how robust the Bitcoin market is. The Bitcoin market can easily handle the sale of a billion dollars in Bitcoin since there is tremendous worldwide demand.