Around 250 BTC from the early days of Bitcoin, known as the “Satoshi era,” were transferred on Friday in five separate transactions, each moving around 50 BTC to new wallets. The total value of the transfers was close to $16 million.

JUST IN: Satoshi era #Bitcoin wallets just moved over 250 BTC worth $16 million mined in Jan 2009 🤯

The owner of the wallets hodled from $0 to $63,000. Legend! 🙌

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) September 20, 2024

The coins were originally mined in January 2009, just months after Bitcoin’s launch, and have lain dormant since. Arkham blockchain analysis shows the wallets are not linked to Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.

The original wallets that moved the coins are: 1CGT3Ywaa2upJfWtUtbXonDPNTfZPWqzmA, 1MBBJBFEaYKHFZAeV7hQ7DWdu3aZktjzFH, 13J8FkimCLQ2EnP1xRm7yHhpaZQa9H4p8E, 18E5d2wQdAfutcXgziHZR71izLRyjSzGSX, 1C4rE41Kox3jZbdJT9yatyh4H2fMxP8qmD

The transfers likely belonged to an early Bitcoin miner who acquired the coins when BTC was practically worthless. After holding them for over 15 years, they are now valued at $16 million.

This demonstrates the conviction of early believers who recognized Bitcoin’s potential value long before the recent meteoric price rises. The anonymous owner mined and held these coins when Bitcoin was a niche experiment, exhibiting remarkable faith.

While the original owner remains a mystery, the transfers are among one of the largest amounts of “Satoshi era” Bitcoin ever moved. There has been no activity sending the coins to exchanges, indicating the owner may intend to continue holding them.

River, a leading U.S. Bitcoin exchange, has launched River Proof of Reserves to provide clients with verifiable proof that their Bitcoin holdings are fully reserved. This sets a new transparency standard for the industry after recent failures of exchanges like FTX shook consumer trust.

River CEO Alex Leishman stated, “River Proof of Reserves is about more than verifying our balances; it’s about reinforcing River’s commitment to integrity and long-term client trust.” He added, “Our goal is to build unshakable trust with our clients. Proof of Reserves is the gold standard for Bitcoin custody.”

The new feature allows clients to independently confirm that River holds their Bitcoin in full reserve multi-sig cold storage. River currently secures over $800 million worth of Bitcoin for its clients. 

According to Leishman, “We’re leading by example by proving every month that your Bitcoin is exactly where we say it is.” After recent failures, he encouraged the industry to adopt similar transparency standards to rebuild trust.

The added transparency also prevents fractional reserve practices from destabilising fiat currencies and leading to bank failures. If more Bitcoin exchanges prove full reserves, it could restore faith in intermediaries while stopping dangerous leverage in the system.

Hut 8 Corp. (Nasdaq | TSX: HUT), a leading Bitcoin mining company, has expanded its partnership with BITMAIN Technologies Ltd., the world’s largest producer of Bitcoin mining servers, to launch the U3S21EXPH, a next-generation ASIC miner. This model will be the first mass-commercialized miner to feature direct liquid-to-chip (DLC) cooling within a U form factor.

Hut 8 plans to deploy the new miner in the second quarter of 2025, with an initial hosting agreement handling approximately 15 exahash per second (EH/s). This hosting deployment, facilitated by custom-built data center infrastructure developed in-house by Hut 8, is a key part of the company’s strategy to expand its computing power across Bitcoin mining and AI compute sectors.

“Our partnership with BITMAIN has allowed us to advance our thinking on ASIC compute and create a more scalable model for data center design as we expand our footprint,” said Asher Genoot, CEO of Hut 8. “The U3S21EXPH will be the first miner from BITMAIN broadly commercialized with DLC cooling within a U form factor, making it rack-ready like traditional data center hardware. This innovation bridges critical engineering gaps between Bitcoin mining and AI data center infrastructure in both form factor and cooling technology, and we believe this convergence will enable us to unlock significant synergies and flexibility going forward.”

The U3S21EXPH can achieve an efficiency of 13 joules per terahash, producing up to 860 terahash. It uses DLC cooling, a technology traditionally reserved for high-performance computing (HPC) data centers, to make Bitcoin mining more energy efficient and scalable.

“Asher and Mike have been invaluable thought partners to BITMAIN since the early days of US Bitcoin Corp, where they demonstrated a unique focus on cost-efficient procurement and operations,” said Irene Gao, Vice President of Mining at BITMAIN. “Hut 8’s technical expertise, operating strength, and track record of innovation made this partnership a natural evolution of our relationship as we began the journey of developing next-generation ASIC technology.”

The commercial agreement between Hut 8 and BITMAIN includes a fixed hosting fee and a purchase option for Hut 8 to buy the hosted machines in up to three tranches. This structure allows Hut 8 to assess market conditions before making further investments, minimizing financial risk. If Hut 8 exercises this purchase option, its self-mining capacity could grow from 5.6 EH/s to 20.6 EH/s.