A cryptocurrency whale that hasn’t moved its bitcoin from a specific wallet since 2013 has recently moved the funds, according to large crypto transaction monitoring tool Whale Alert.
The bitcoin whale’s wallet first received 900 BTC back in 2012, from a rather active address at the time that could have belonged to a cryptocurrency exchange. The whale’s funds sat dormant in that wallet for almost nine years, only receiving small amounts of BTC from other wallets until now.
The funds have now moved and were split among hundreds of wallets, presumably in a bid to preserve anonymity. It’s unclear whether the funds were sent to cryptocurrency exchanges to then be sold on the market.
At the time the whale’s wallet received the funds, bitcoin was trading at around $13.5, meaning that the 900 BTC in its wallet were worth over $12,000. In less than a decade, the funds appreciated around 272,400% to $33.18 million, with each bitcoin now trading at $36,870.
As Daily Hodl reports, the bitcoin whale wallet does not appear to be associated with any cryptocurrency exchange or business. The wallet seemingly just belonging to an early BTC adopter who has only now started moving its funds.
The small amounts of BTC it has received from other wallets until now do not appear to be the owner of the wallet stacking sats, but instead malicious actors on the Bitcoin network targeting it with a dusting attack.
Dusting attacks were created to deanonymize users on the Bitcoin blockchain. Attackers send small amounts of BTC – often referred to as dust – to large addresses. The attackers then track down the funds they sent to multiple addresses and analyze them to find which addresses belong to the same wallet.
Their ultimate goal is to link the wallet and addresses to an entity they can then target to get their BTC. One of the best ways to fend off dusting attacks is to simply not move the received dust, as analysis of these funds’ movements will not be possible if they don’t move.
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The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.
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