$8.6B Bitcoin Shock: Coinbase’s Conor Grogan Warns of Potential Mega-Hack

A jaw-dropping $8.6 billion Bitcoin transfer has set off alarm bells across crypto—and Coinbase’s Conor Grogan isn’t mincing words. Could this be the prelude to a historic heist?

The Whale That Rocked the Market

When sums this large move, the market holds its breath. The transaction—untethered from any obvious institutional play—has traders scrambling for explanations. ‘Glitch or grab?’ is the question on everyone’s lips.

Security on Red Alert

Exchanges are reportedly double-checking cold storage protocols. Grogan’s warning underscores crypto’s eternal paradox: the very transparency that builds trust also gives hackers a roadmap.

Wall Street’s Tiny Violin Plays On

Meanwhile, traditional finance elites are probably sipping bourbon and muttering ‘told you so’—as if their own systems haven’t been leaking like sieves for decades. The irony’s thicker than a blockchain ledger.

Bitcoin Cash Transaction Raises Suspicions Ahead of $8B BTC Transfer

Grogan pointed to an unusual transaction involving Bitcoin Cash (BCH) made just hours before the massive Bitcoin movements.

He noted a single BCH test transaction from one of the whale clusters, followed by sweeping transfers of 10,000 BTC at a time shortly after.

“What makes me say this is the other BCH wallets have not been touched at all; why wouldn’t they also sweep these?” Grogan added, suggesting the behavior could indicate compromised keys rather than owner activity.

Blockchain intelligence firm Arkham later confirmed that a single entity was behind the transfers, moving all $8.6 billion in BTC from eight wallets that had received the Bitcoin back in April or May 2011.

A single entity moved $8.6 BILLION of BTC from 8 addresses in the past day.

All of the Bitcoin was moved into the original wallets on either 2nd April or 4th May 2011 and has been held for over 14 years.

Currently, the Bitcoin is sitting in 8 new addresses and has not been… pic.twitter.com/nm53tVRzLJ

The assets, untouched for more than 14 years, have now been consolidated into eight new wallets, Arkham said, and have not been moved since the Thursday transactions.

Meanwhile, 10x Research noted that speculation is swirling that these wallets could belong to Roger Ver, the early Bitcoin evangelist known as “Bitcoin Jesus.”

Ver was released on bail from a Spanish prison on June 5, and the reactivated coins were last moved in May 2011, just months after Ver reportedly began acquiring Bitcoin in February 2011.

If true, the wallets could represent billions of dollars under Ver’s control.

Speculation that the $8.6B in Dormant Bitcoin Just Moved are from Roger Ver. He was released on bail from Spanish prison on June 5 and those Bitcoins last moved in May 2011 while Roger got into Bitcoin in February 2011. He will certainly have billions of dollars worth of…

Despite speculation over a potential hack, Bitcoin’s price remained steady, down 1% in the last 24 hours and trading at around $108,150 as of publication, according to CoinMarketCap data.

Crypto Hacks, Scams Cost Investors $2.2B in H1 2025: CertiK

Crypto investors lost over $2.2 billion to hacks, scams, and breaches in the first half of 2025, driven largely by wallet compromises and phishing attacks, according to CertiK’s latest security report.

Wallet breaches alone caused $1.7 billion in losses across just 34 incidents, while phishing scams accounted for over $410 million across 132 attacks.

Two major incidents, including Bybit’s $1.5 billion hack in February and Cetus Protocol’s $225 million exploit in May, skewed the year’s losses upward, together accounting for nearly $1.78 billion.

Without these, losses align more closely with previous years at around $690 million.

Ethereum remained the primary target, suffering over $1.6 billion in losses across 175 events.

The report also pointed to rising sophistication of phishing schemes and ongoing risks from social engineering, urging crypto users to verify links, avoid suspicious sites, and use hardware wallets.