Miner wallets with 250 Bitcoin from 2009 are active again

On the morning of September 20, 2024, blockchain analysts discovered that there were movements on five wallets that date back to the early days of Bitcoin and have not been used for more than 15 years. The transactions total 250 Bitcoin, which were mined a few weeks after the Genesis block, the first block of the Bitcoin blockchain from January 3, 2009.

There is speculation in the Bitcoin community as to who might be behind these wallets. Could it even be a sign of life from Satoshi Nakamoto?

After the mysterious creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, published the Bitcoin whitepaper on October 31, 2008 and launched the network with the first block of the Bitcoin blockchain on January 3, 2009, few people could have guessed how the cryptocurrency would develop. Accordingly, only a few people devoted themselves to Bitcoin mining in order to keep the network running and to carry out transactions as well as to obtain and circulate new Bitcoin.
Nakamoto sent the world's first Bitcoin transaction of 10 BTC to the US software developer and Bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney on January 12, 2009.
The number of miners was still very small at the time, so it was still worthwhile to carry out mining using a normal desktop computer. Satoshi Nakamoto personally took care of the network, mined countless blocks and collected the block subsidies, which initially amounted to 50 BTC, on numerous wallets.

The wallets that have now been reactivated date back to this early period. The Bitcoin moved are all mining rewards and originate from the Coinbase transactions of mined blocks in the period from January 29 to February 2, 2009 - less than a month after the Genesis block:

• 1C4rE41Kox3jZbdJT9yatyh4H2fMxP8qmD
  Block 2247
  January 29, 2009, 16:06 UTC
   
• 18E5d2wQdAfutcXgziHZR71izLRyjSzGSX
  Block 2401
  January 30, 2009; 22:53 UTC
   
• 13J8FkimCLQ2EnP1xRm7yHhpaZQa9H4p8E
  Block 2455
  January 31, 2009, 10:05 UTC
   
• 1MBBJBFEaYKHFZAeV7hQ7DWdu3aZktjzFH
  Block 2486
  January 31, 2009, 14:58 UTC
   
• 1CGT3Ywaa2upJfWtUtbXonDPNTfZPWqzmA
  Block 2690
  February 2, 2009, 06:08 UTC

At that time, Bitcoin had no equivalent value in fiat money. In October 2009, Bitcoin developer Martii “Sirius” Malmi sold 5050 Bitcoin for the first time for 5.02 US dollars - i.e. at a price of around 0.001 US dollars per Bitcoin. On May 22, 2010, the Bitcoiner Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 Bitcoin for two pizzas. In 2011, Bitcoin reached the value of 1 US dollar on Mt.Gox, the largest Bitcoin exchange at the time. Today, the 250 Bitcoin on the five miner wallets are worth almost 16 million US dollars.

As the Bitcoin was mined just a few weeks after the Genesis block, it is not unlikely that the wallets belong to people who were involved in the launch of the Bitcoin blockchain.

However, it is not possible to say for sure whether the wallets actually belong to the missing anonymous creator of Bitcoin. On April 26, 2011, Nakamoto said goodbye to his Bitcoin project in his last email. No one knows whether he is still alive.

This makes the movements on the five wallets mentioned all the more exciting, which have led to numerous speculations in the Bitcoin community:

Are the movements a sign of life from Nakamoto? Or do his heirs or the heirs of Hal Finney, who unfortunately has already passed away, have access to the wallets?

Or is it an unknown person who heard about the project back then, mined for a few days and has now reactivated the old hard disk or even woken up from his coma as a millionaire?

It remains to be seen whether the further movements of the coins will lead to conclusions about the owners or whether the owners will remain anonymous.