#BTCWhaleMovement A whale who had held onto a Bitcoin fortune for 14 years on Friday started moving the enormous stash of 80,000 BTC—worth $8.6 billion at today's prices.

The coins started moving in batches of 10,000 BTC, or about $1 billion in BTC, early morning New York time on Friday, data from Arkham Intelligence shows. By 11 a.m. Eastern Time, the $8.6 billion in crypto had been shifted to new addresses.

Eagle-eyed blockchain observers were quick to point out on X that the movements came from an entity that had received the coins back in 2011 as "coinbase" transactions—the first transaction in a block created by miners. When miners create new blocks on the blockchain, they are rewarded with newly minted digital coins.

Conor Grogan, the director of America's biggest crypto exchange Coinbase, posted on X that the entity linked to the addresses had a fortune of $21.5 billion—making them one of the top five largest holders of Bitcoin in crypto history.

Grogan added that if he had to guess, the Bitcoin wallet likely belongs to an "OG miner," meaning someone who was very early to mining BTC on the network.

In the world of crypto, a whale is someone who holds a large amount of digital coins and tokens. A Bitcoin whale is usually defined by an entity that holds 1,000 BTC—worth $108 million at today's prices—or more. #ETH