Bitcoin Price Unfazed by 50-BTC Transaction From Satoshi-Era Wallet

Someone, whose identity cannot be unraveled, has sent 50 Bitcoin that was mined back in February 2009 to two different wallets. Considering that the first block of Bitcoin (BTC) was mined in January of the same year, it narrows down the individual to either Satoshi Nakamoto himself or a few other miners who were present at the time.

50 BTC mined in February 2009 moves. Source: Blockchair

It is highly unlikely that Satoshi himself moved the 50 BTC for various reasons. The most obvious evidence that disproves it is Satoshi is the Patoshi pattern. Early blocks that the creator of Bitcoin mined can be identified with a piece of data called “nonce.” Casa CEO Jameson Lopp told Cointelegraph in an interview:

“It doesn’t look like these coins match the Patoshi pattern. The block, in which they were mined, had an extraNonce of 477. A Patoshi pattern mined block at that height would be expected to have an extraNonce higher than 2,367.”

Similarly, Nic Carter, a co-founder of Coinmetrics, said: “It’s basically impossible to prove that Satoshi didn’t mine these coins, but the best research we have suggests that Satoshi mined a specific set of blocks, of which this is not one.”

Even in 2009, Lopp explained that there were several other miners apart from the dominant one, who is speculated to be Satoshi. Hence, it could be an unknown miner who moved the 50 BTC as Lopp explained:

“Contrary to popular belief, there were several miners in those first few months of Bitcoin it’s just that the dominant miner — who many assume to be Satoshi — had a ton of the hash rate.”

Bitcoin’s price initially fell from around $9,900 to $9,300, as the market first reacted to the transaction. However, as more information about the intricacies of the transaction was uncovered, it reduced the probability of the sender being Satoshi. Shortly thereafter, Bitcoin’s price recovered.

Given that it was likely one of the early miners who was experimenting with BTC in 2009 who sent the 50 BTC and not Satoshi, the market seemingly believes that the miner had enough appealing reasons to send BTC from an old wallet, risking privacy-related issues as it gets publicized.

Low nonce decreases the probability of the sender being Satoshi. Source: Jimmy Song

Lost hard drive recovery, privacy and asset diversification

When there were a limited number of services and platforms that allowed users to keep Bitcoin safely in a non-custodial manner, many users and miners kept their BTC in hard drives or external storage.

Since some miners pushed through and mined thousands of blocks and others stopped at just several, it is entirely possible that an old-time enthusiast found a hard drive dating back to 2009 and decided to move the BTC or sell it. Lopp noted in a conversation with Cointelegraph:

“Could be a million possible reasons. Maybe someone found a lost hard drive. Maybe someone needed to make a super-private transaction, so they used freshly mined coins. Maybe it’s just…