A batch of 100.02 Bitcoin mined in July 2010 moved on Wednesday for the first time in 16 years.
At roughly $83,000 per coin, the stash was worth about $8.3 million when it left. Based on Bitbo’s highest registered BTC price in 2010, the same holdings were worth around $29 when they were mined.
Transfer confirmed in block 970,379
The transaction was confirmed at 18:52 UTC in block 970,379, one of the batches of transactions that the Bitcoin network writes to its public ledger roughly every 10 minutes.
The 100.02 BTC was split between two new addresses. One received 10 BTC, and the other received 90.02 BTC. An address is the string of characters that functions like an account number on the network.
The holder paid a fee of 1,467 satoshis. A satoshi is one hundred-millionth of a bitcoin, and the fee came to about $1.22 to move roughly $8.3 million.
Both destination wallets use modern bc1q addresses, a format that did not exist when the coins were mined. Nothing in the transaction identifies the owner, and moving coins between addresses is not the same as selling them.
Two mining payouts were merged in July 2010
The stash came from two pieces mined within days of each other: 50.02 BTC in block 70,522 on July 26, 2010, and 50 BTC in block 70,748 on July 28, 2010.
Those two payouts were merged into a single transaction on July 30, 2010, and sent to the address that spent them this week.
A snapshot of Bitcoin’s early years
Decrypt noted that 2010 later became one of the defining years in Bitcoin’s early history. Florida programmer Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 BTC for two pizzas that year, a purchase worth about $41 at the time. Compared with that period, the value of this 100.02 BTC stash has risen by more than a millionfold.
Bitcoin’s mining reward has since been cut in half four times. The latest reduction came in the April 2024 halving, which lowered the reward to 3.125 BTC. The event is scheduled to recur roughly every four years. A block mined today pays one-sixteenth of what those two 2010 blocks paid.
Galaxy said the address was active, but these coins were not
The address itself was not completely dormant. It sent out 100 BTC twice on August 8, 2015, another 100 BTC in December 2017, and 249 BTC in March 2018.
Those were different coins. Bitcoin tracks funds as individual chunks, similar to separate bills, so an address can spend some while others remain untouched. Galaxy tracks the coins rather than the address and said these specific coins had not moved since 2010.
Galaxy Research wrote on X: “We maintain a complete ledger of every single UTXO and all their historical movements (about 1.7 terabytes). This address has been somewhat active in the past, but these specific coins have not moved since 2010. We track the coins.”
Satoshi-era coins have been waking up in clusters
Coins from Bitcoin’s first years are often called Satoshi-era coins, a reference to Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Decrypt said these old holdings have recently been moving in clusters.
In February 2025, a 50 BTC batch that had been worth $0.10 per coin when mined moved after about 15 years. By then, it was worth roughly $5 million. The holder did not send a small test transaction first, even though that is a common step used to make sure a destination address works.
In August, 49.97 BTC first received in July 2011 moved after about 15 years. At the time those coins were first received, Bitcoin traded below $15. The funds later went to a wallet that blockchain analytics platform Arkham labeled as FalconX, a prime broker serving trading firms. The label alone does not confirm a sale.
Decrypt also noted that between August 16 and 26, six wallets dormant since 2011, 2012, or 2014 moved 553.59 BTC, worth about $40 million at the time. Two of those wallets carried tags tied to a New York lawsuit that asks a court to declare 39,069 dormant addresses abandoned property.
No onward movement seen as of Thursday
As of Thursday, the 10 BTC and 90.02 BTC remained in their new addresses, with nothing sent onward.
So far, on-chain data shows no follow-up transfer from this whale’s newly moved coins.