A Satoshi-era Bitcoin whale who has held their cryptocurrency since 2009 begun to sell their holdings, after it started mining the flagship cryptocurrency just five days after its first block was created.
Blockchain analysis firm Arkham Intelligence has been tracking the investor’s activity, which began with a series of transactions to American crypto exchange Kraken two months ago, and recently revealed the whale has sold a total of $10.52 million worth of BTC.
The whale, nevertheless, still has $71.7 million worth of Bitcoin on its wallets, suggesting more selling pressure could be on the horizon.
The whale’s stash includes “Satoshi-era” coins, with the term referring to the period in which Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, was still active in the community. Satoshi left the crypto space in December 2010.
The sell-off comes as the total number of Bitcoin whale entities hit its highest level since January 2021, with data from on-chain analytics firm Glassnode showing there are 1,678 BTC whales.
The data suggests that large cryptocurrency investors have been accumulating, to the point that those who have over 1,000 BTC in their wallets, equivalent to round $66 million, have kept on growing sine early 2023.
The data was first shared by André Dragosch, European Head of Research at Bitwise and was shared on the microblogging platform X. Whale activity is closely monitored in the cryptocurrency space, as their influence over prices could be significant.
The number of Bitcoin whales hit a three-year high at time in which a number of Bitcoin addresses that have “never had a Bitcoin outflow” are currently accumulating the flagship cryptocurrency at an unprecedented pace, to the point they are now holding 2.9 million BTC.
Featured image via Unsplash.