Satoshi-Era Bitcoin Worth $8.3 Million Moves After 16 Years

A batch of 100.02 Bitcoin mined in July 2010, from a period commonly known as the Satoshi-era, moved on Wednesday for the first time in 16 years.

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 stash was worth around $29 when it was mined.

The transaction was confirmed at 18:52 UTC in block 970,379—one of the batches of transactions that 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.

The holder paid a fee of 1,467 satoshis—a satoshi is one hundred-millionth of a bitcoin—which came to about $1.22 for moving $8.3 million. 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 is not the same as selling them.

Both pieces were mined within days of each other: 50.02 BTC in block 70,522 on July 26, 2010, and 50 BTC in block 70,748 on July 28. The two payouts were merged into a single transaction on July 30, 2010, landing in the address that just moved them.

Nobody knew it back then, but 2010 turned out to be a special year for Bitcoin. A Florida programmer named Laszlo Hanyecz had paid 10,000 BTC for two pizzas, a bill of about $41. Today, the stash has grown more than a millionfold since.

BitcoinBTC · USD

$81,692−3.52%

24H7D1M1YYTD

Oct 1Oct 3Oct 5Oct 7Oct 8

$86.8k$84.8k$82.8k$80.7k

24h HighHigh$83,563

24h LowLow$80,427

VolVol$1.8B

Market projectionsOdds by Myriad

→

$50$100$500

Buy

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 itself has not been idle: 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 says these particular coins had not moved since 2010.

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—yet.