Bitcoin that sat untouched since March 2010 moved over the weekend, when twelve addresses transferred a combined 600 BTC worth roughly $48 million. The coins were mined in Bitcoin’s first year, when each block still paid a 50 BTC reward, and the transfer briefly revived speculation about a link to Satoshi Nakamoto. Blockchain tracking firm Whale Alert says that speculation does not hold up.
The movement matters to traders less for its size than for what it says about the oldest corners of the bitcoin supply. Coins from 2010 are part of a small pool that has never moved, and every reactivation draws scrutiny because some of that pool genuinely does belong to early contributors whose identities remain unknown.
What the on-chain data shows
The movement was first picked up by Lookonchain, which flagged seven miner wallets that sent 350 BTC after about 16.5 years of inactivity. Whale Alert then expanded the count to twelve blocks totaling 600 BTC. One of the addresses received its 50 BTC reward on March 5, 2010, and moved the coins to a new address on September 5, 2026. Blockchain.com records confirm the full timeline from reward to transfer.
The timing pattern caught analysts’ attention. One reward moved several blocks before the rest, a sequence Whale Alert read as a test transaction before the larger batch. That kind of small test transfer first is common when an old wallet holder regains access and wants to confirm the keys work before moving everything. It suggests deliberate human action rather than a bulk script or an automated sweep of lost coins.
Each of the twelve rewards came from a block mined in March 2010, when the network was barely 15 months old and mining could still be done on ordinary laptops. The 50 BTC block subsidy in place then has since been cut in half four times, most recently in April 2024, when it fell from 6.25 BTC to the current 3.125 BTC per block.
Not Satoshi’s coins
The coins date to a period when Nakamoto was still active in Bitcoin development and public communication. Nakamoto gradually withdrew from the project through 2010, and the last known message attributed to the creator dates to April 2011. That overlap is why any movement of early-era coins draws immediate speculation.
Whale Alert’s analysis points to anonymous individual miners rather than any known entity. The firm had earlier examined seven of the rewards and said in a Sunday post on X that those blocks were not mined by Nakamoto. The expanded review of all twelve reached the same conclusion. “None of the blocks can be connected to Satoshi based on our research,” a spokesperson for the firm told Cointelegraph.
Researchers distinguish between satoshi-era coins, meaning anything mined while Nakamoto was active, and coins Nakamoto himself is believed to hold, often estimated at around 1 million BTC in early Patoshi-pattern blocks. The two categories overlap in time but not in origin, and the distinction depends on block-level mining patterns that on-chain forensics firms have mapped for years.
Where the coins went
Importantly for market watchers, the coins did not land on exchange deposit addresses. They moved to fresh wallets with no known exchange affiliation. Dormant bitcoin moving to an exchange is often read as a signal of intent to sell. Transfers between cold wallets look more like housekeeping, key migration, or consolidation by a long-term holder.
The episode was not isolated. On the same weekend, seven addresses tied to early miners moved about 350 BTC, roughly $28 million at the time, following the same pattern of coins from Bitcoin’s earliest days transferring to new unlabeled addresses. KuCoin’s news desk noted that similar reactivations have occurred repeatedly in recent months, suggesting a pattern rather than a one-off event.
Why old coins keep moving the market’s mood
Satoshi-era reactivations happen several times a year and tend to spook traders even when there is no selling involved. The psychological weight comes from the size of untouched supply: coins mined when bitcoin traded between fractions of a cent and a few dollars are now worth tens of millions each. With bitcoin trading near $79,000, a wave of such transfers can pressure sentiment even though the actual supply overhang is small.
Whale Alert has analyzed several similar movements this year and ruled out a Nakamoto connection in each case. Analysts note that the practical price impact of these transfers is usually limited, but headlines about early coins waking up reliably generate short-term anxiety in the derivatives market, where liquidations can amplify any dip.
The weekend episode also shows how quickly the monitoring ecosystem works now. Whale Alert flagged the transfers within hours, Lookonchain had published its own count of the wallets the same day, and newsrooms had the full block-by-block breakdown by Sunday morning. Sixteen years ago the idea that anyone would watch individual UTXOs in real time would have sounded absurd.
For now, the 600 BTC sits in new addresses with no exchange trail. If the holder eventually moves the coins to a trading venue, on-chain monitors will flag it quickly, as they did here within hours of the first test transaction. Until then, the transfer reads as one more long-dormant wallet waking up, not as the founder’s stash finally moving.