Someone just moved $8.3 million in Bitcoin and paid $1.22 for the privilege. A batch of 100.02 BTC, mined in July 2010 in what’s commonly known as the Satoshi-era, moved on Wednesday for the first time in 16 years.
The fee came to 1,467 satoshis, and a satoshi is one hundred-millionth of a bitcoin. At roughly $83,000 per coin, the stash was worth about $8.3 million when it left. Based on Bitbo’s highest registered price of BTC in 2010, the same coins were worth around $29 when they were mined.
Two payouts, one long sleep
The transaction was confirmed at 18:52 UTC in block 970,379, one of the batches of transactions Bitcoin’s network stamps onto its public ledger roughly every 10 minutes. It split the coins between two new addresses, an address being the string of characters that works like an account number: 10 BTC went to one and 90.02 BTC to the other.
Both destinations are modern bc1q addresses, a format that did not exist when the coins were mined. Nothing in the transaction identifies the owner, and moving coins between addresses does not mean selling them.
The stash itself is two mining payouts that became one. The first piece, 50.02 BTC, came from block 70,522 on July 26, 2010. The second, 50 BTC, came from block 70,748 on July 28. The two were merged into a single transaction on July 30, 2010, landing in the address that just moved them.
When 10,000 BTC bought two pizzas
Nobody knew it back then, but 2010 turned out to be a special year for Bitcoin. A Florida programmer named Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 BTC for two pizzas, a bill of about $41. Today, the stash has grown more than a millionfold since.
The mining reward has been cut in half four times since, most recently to 3.125 BTC in the April 2024 halving, a scheduled event that repeats roughly every four years. A block mined today pays one-sixteenth of what those two blocks did.
The address is no stranger to movement
That address has not been idle, either. It sent out 100 BTC twice on August 8, 2015, 100 BTC in December 2017 and 249 BTC in March 2018. Those were other coins. Bitcoin tracks money as individual chunks, a bit like bills, so an address can spend some while others sit untouched.
Galaxy tracks the coins rather than the address, and said these particular coins had not moved since 2010.
“We maintain a complete ledger of every single UTXO and all their historical movements (about 1.7 terabytes). This address has been somewhat active in the past, but these specific coins have not moved since 2010. We track the coins.” Galaxy Research said that in a post on October 8, 2026.
Old Bitcoin keeps waking up
Coins from Bitcoin’s first years are called Satoshi-era, after the network’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, and they have been waking up in clusters. In February 2025, a 50 BTC batch valued at $0.10 per coin when mined moved after about 15 years, by then worth roughly $5 million. The holder skipped a test transaction, a small trial transfer people usually send first to make sure the destination works.
In August, 49.97 BTC first received in July 2011, when Bitcoin traded under $15, moved after about 15 years and went on to a wallet that Arkham, a blockchain analytics platform, labeled as FalconX, a prime broker serving trading firms. The label alone does not confirm a sale.
Between August 16 and 26, six wallets dormant since 2011, 2012 or 2014 moved 553.59 BTC, about $40 million. Two carried tags tied to a New York lawsuit that asks a court to declare 39,069 dormant addresses abandoned property.
As of Thursday, the 10 BTC and 90.02 BTC were still sitting in their new addresses, with nothing sent onward. So Bitcoin holders, you can breathe: this whale is not dumping their coins, at least not yet.
