The likelihood of ancient Bitcoin whales selling off in the short term is low!
On Friday, an ancient address that had been dormant for 14 years and held 80,000 Bitcoins was suddenly activated, triggering panic selling in the market. According to Coinbase director Conor Grogan's analysis, these addresses may belong to an independent miner from 2011, who at that time accumulated mining rewards from 180 blocks and once held 200,000 Bitcoins, making him the fifth-largest whale in Bitcoin history. What unsettles the market the most is that his holding cost was only $1.76 per coin, and at the current price of $108,000, his unrealized gains are as high as 61,000 times. A sell-off would inevitably cause a huge impact on the market. Considering that the German government’s sale of 49,858 Bitcoins in 2024 caused months of market fluctuations (with a maximum drop of 32%), if this whale chooses to cash out, the potential selling pressure of 80,000 Bitcoins could create a more severe market tsunami.
A data study by Glassnode in 2020 showed that Bitcoins that have not moved for ten years have only a 0.5% chance of re-entering market circulation, making addresses holding coins for over ten years (without any transfer records) generally regarded as permanently lost. So why would "sleeping" Bitcoins suddenly awaken? Currently, three main versions are widely circulated in the market:
1. A Chinese national named Deng controls 80,000 Bitcoins and was previously sentenced to 16.5 years in prison for illegal fundraising mining. He lost his asset disposal rights during his incarceration and was released early this year through special channels.
2. An ancient miner accidentally recovered the hard drive containing the private key.
3. The super forces driving this round of Bitcoin price increase are aligned with a certain whale. They accumulated a large amount of low-priced chips before driving the price up, and the activation of Bitcoins this time aims to test the market reaction and reduce the market's sensitivity to large movements.
From the current situation, version three is the most likely, for two main reasons: first, after the whale unexpectedly obtained 80,000 Bitcoins, he only transferred them to a new address without further operations, which aligns with conventional security management behavior of large Bitcoin holders; second, after the news broke, the price in the secondary Bitcoin market only dropped by 1.09%, and there were no signs of smart money rushing to sell. These two points indicate that the whale's intention to sell in the short term is not obvious, and the super forces did not consider the unexpected activation of the ancient address as an uncontrollable factor.
