Bitcoin (BTC) Whale Wallets Spook Crypto Twitter With Sudden Moves

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Wallets containing large amounts of bitcoin (BTC), which have seen no activity for several years, are suddenly showing signs of life, sparking conversations on Crypto Twitter about possible reasons for the moves.

Whale, a colloquial term used in crypto circles, refers to holders of large amounts of tokens. Due to the size of their holdings, whales can influence the price or sentiment around a token.

One such wallet, which was last active in 2012, moved more than 400 bitcoins ($11 million) over the weekend, the data showed. The bitcoin whale moved 360 bitcoins to one wallet and 40 bitcoins to other wallets. The whale had purchased some 900 bitcoins in 2012, holding the asset ever since and making a gain of nearly 40,000% on the initial investment.

The move comes on the back of several other whales moving large amounts of bitcoin and ether (BTC) over the past few weeks.

Another whale wallet moved some 279 bitcoins earlier in April after more than a decade of inactivity. The whale received 1,128 bitcoins between 2012 and 2013 when the price fluctuated between $12 and $195, with the holdings valued at $31 million at the time of writing.

Ether holders also move their tokens. Last week, a participant in the Ether Initial Coin Offering (ICO) moved 1 Ether (ETH) to another wallet after eight years of inactivity. The wallet contains over 2,356 ethers purchased at 31 cents each in the ICO worth over $4 million.

The identity of these whales is unknown and none of them communicated the reason for their movements using chain messages.

The silence has spurred speculation about Crypto Twitter’s moves, with reasons ranging from developers of dark website Silk Road having access to their wallets to in-the-know insiders moving tokens ahead of bad news. Some are even speculating that their wallet passwords have been hacked.

There were now too many portfolios over 10 years old coming to life across multiple assets all of a sudden, CEHV partner Adam Cochrane said on Twitter. Unless these wallets are somehow related to Mt Gox cold storage, an old wallet generator must have been cracked.

Cochranes’ reasoning may not be entirely misguided, as old wallets have repeatedly been targeted by hackers and online thieves.

Earlier this month, Taylor Monahan, founder of Ethereum service provider MyCrypto, reported a massive wallet drain operation that appeared to affect whales and early ether holders.

Mohanan estimated that over 5,000 ether was drained from these wallets in the sophisticated attack. My best guess is that someone got hold of a big cache of data from over a year ago and methodically dumps the keys by scanning them from the treasury, she tweeted at the time.

These security issues may have caused the recent movement of bitcoins into whale wallets. But for now, everyone is just guessing.

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