Silk Road-Linked Bitcoin Whales Awaken After 12 Years—$324M Suddenly on the Move
Dormant wallets from Bitcoin’s early days—long associated with the infamous Silk Road marketplace—just liquidated $324 million worth of BTC. The coins hadn’t budged since 2013, back when ’crypto regulation’ meant hoping the Feds didn’t raid your basement mining rig.
Timing is suspicious: The move comes as Bitcoin flirts with new all-time highs, proving once again that nothing wakes up crypto OGs like the smell of fresh profit. Traders are now speculating whether this is a strategic exit or just another whale testing the waters before dumping on retail.
Funny how ’decentralized purists’ always seem to cash out through KYC-compliant exchanges when the price is right.
Satoshi-Era Bitcoin Whale Transfer (Source: Spot On Chain)
The second wallet, “1PiEK,” transferred 1,079 BTC, roughly $102.5 million. This wallet had been inactive even longer, with its last activity recorded almost 12 years ago.
Meanwhile, independent blockchain analyst Sani of TimechainIndex believes these addresses may trace back to Silk Road, the now-defunct darknet marketplace that heavily relied on Bitcoin in its early days.
He pointed out that a look into the transaction history of these wallets uncovered connections to historic UTXO consolidations, tying them to Silk Road as early as 2012.
Specifically, some recently moved funds originated from a significant 10,000 BTC transaction (TXID: 53952c…) believed to stem from Silk Road-linked holdings. These coins were then split across multiple addresses, including the two recently reactivated wallets.
His analysis also highlighted an earlier consolidation involving 19,940 BTC (TXID: 8b555a…), part of which ended up in a separate wallet later seized by the US government after Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht’s arrest.
Considering this, Sani concluded:
“The recent movement marks the first activity from these two wallets in over 12 years. The ultimate identity of the entity or individual moving these long-dormant funds remains unknown, though their origins are clearly linked to Silk Road.”
