Bitcoin was created by what is largely believed to be a man behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. These first coins were mined on the Proof of Work protocol, and ultimately can be most nearly tracked to Satoshi and his contemporaries in 2009, the infancy of the Bitcoin network. Satoshi’s compiled holdings are believed to be nearly 1 million Bitcoin in total. While speculation on who and what Satoshi is, run rampant regularly, today was special in the crypto Universe.
According to a twitter favorite, @whale_alert , 40BTC tokens from a possible Satoshi wallet were moved from an address that has been dormant since 2009, the year of the digital asset’s creation. The internet as a result erupted in glee and the conspiracy theories started flying, that Satoshi Nakamoto was back, and that he was going to dump all of his Bitcoin into the market and so on. While some still believe and are hotly debating on platforms like Twitter Reddit and Discord forums, long time cryptocurrency and Bitcoin advocates and industry leaders have come out saying the hype will not live up to people’s expectations. While there is a possibility that these 40 BTC were and are owned by Satoshi, Jameson Lopp, and Jimmy Song both took to Twitter to say while the list of individuals is short that could own these tokens, by tracking the on-chain activity, they do not believe that the tokens were moved or ever owned by Satoshi himself.
Even more interesting, Anthony Pompliano took to Twitter to say that he does not care nor want to know who Satoshi Nakamoto is, and that he/she/they are not relevant to the network any longer. Nevertheless, the undefeated internet continued to stir the pot, causing some FUD amongst HODLers and as such the entire crypto market took a large dip Thursday afternoon from which it has yet to recover. At the time of writing, the BTC price is $9511 according to coinmarketcap.com was $9765 before the report, and earlier in the day dropped all the way down to $9400. Additionally, the intriguing transfer caused crypto enthusiasts to get “satoshi” trending on Twitter earlier on Wednesday afternoon.
Earlier in the week, Adam Back Blockstream CEO had to defend or shut down speculation that he himself was Satoshi. His opinion of the events were similar to the sentiment of Lopp and Song in that Satoshi, were he to begin selling, would most likely sell his later mined coins, to preserve anonymity. It seems to be evident, that the transfer was not made by Satoshi himself, but the speculation alone is exciting enough to talk about, as many reconsider the shrouded history of the digital currency.
