Ancient Bitcoin Whale Sends $4.2M BTC to Kraken

Ancient Bitcoin whale (32MkT) has sent another 10 BTC (~$634K) to Kraken, the latest in a series of transactions after the whale awakened just last month on 31 August with a 1 BTC transfer out to Kraken. The most recent transaction brings the total amount sent out to 66 BTC or approximately $4.21M worth. The whale still holds 1.159K BTC after their most recent transfer (~$72.2M).

The re-awakening of such an old wallet is a significant event for on-chain analysts. The consistent, small-batch transfers to an exchange suggest a deliberate and careful liquidation strategy, perhaps to avoid unsettling the market or to take profits incrementally.

This Bitcoin whale was an active miner just one month after Bitcoin’s genesis block in January 2009, where they mined block after block of rewards, slowly accumulating a stack of over 2,000 BTC, or 40 blocks of rewards. These rewards were later consolidated all to a single address (1CEq1) in 2011, then split into two addresses, 19StT and 1E3P1. 19StT’s stack of 1,225 BTC eventually leads us to today’s transfer out to Kraken, while 1E3P1 had already transferred majority of their BTC out to Bitstamp in several transactions between 2014 and 2017.

This entity's history as a miner from February 2009 places them among the earliest pioneers of the network. The detailed on-chain history, from the 2011 consolidation to the 2014-2017 sales, offers a valuable case study in the long-term behavior of a first-generation Bitcoin adopter.