The cryptocurrency industry is shrouded in mystery because the general public does not understand how things function.
Things got a lot funky as a mysterious Bitcoin wallet has gained prominence after processing $100 million in transactions during the last 10 days.
One of the world's richest bitcoin wallets, which holds $720 million worth of bitcoin has suddenly become active once again.
Last seen active four years ago, it has once again become active as transactions started being processed towards the end of August which could potentially change the market.
The Bitcoin wallet contains 0.52 percent of the world's supply. This puts the total that the mysterious wallet has to around 111,114 Bitcoins. This amount has changed since wallet watchers have noticed $100 million worth of Bitcoin has moved to Bitfinex and Binance in the last 10 days.
The wallet movement was noticed by active Redditor u/Sick_Silk. The Redditor has been closely watching the account and the bitcoin movements were posted directly on Reddit, with appropriate commentary.
In a statement, u/Sick_Silk wrote
It seems that the owner of a huge SilkRoad related wallet is moving funds actively since 3 days, dividing it in chunks of 100 coins by subwallets. The original wallet owned 111,114.62 BTC / BCH , which is currently valuated ~ $844M. Last movements on these subwallets are 4 years and 5 months old (March 9th, 2014). The chunks have been divided over time to 60,000 coins then to 30,000 / 20,000 / 10,000 / 5,000 / 500 and now 100 coins.
The Redditor suspects that the account is linked to the now-closed Silk Road, the notorious Dark Web market that allowed people to trade millions of dollars in illegal goods. This ranged from drugs to child pornography. It also allowed people to hire hackers and other criminals for their services.
The connection to Silk Road was made when the account was linked to an address operated by Ross Ulbricht, who creator of Silk Road. The assumption is that the owner of the wallet was a part of the Silk Road project and is now finally moving out some of their funds.
Is Mt. Geox Involved?
However, crypto analysts have also suggested that there could be another player involved. Analysts have thrown shade at the old Mt. Gox wallet. The Mt. Gox hack was the first major Bitcoin heist in history and was one of the reasons for the first major Bitcoin price slump. Bitcoin Security specialist WizSec thinks that it is an old Mt. Gox which is bitcoin parlance for a wallet with large funds.
