With eyes of the world on Dorian Nakamoto and the uncovering of who is the real Satoshi Nakamoto behind bitcoin, a massive 180,000 bitcoin transfer (around $115 million) took place earlier today.  The transfer was a combination of transactions from five different addresses to one single destination.   While any large transaction will always draw interest, the current transfer is noticeable in that four of the addresses hadn’t shown movement in over two years.  According to research from visual Blockchain website Blockr, the size of the transfer amounts to the largest ever from older addresses when using the ‘days of bitcoins destroyed’ calculation.

Since the transfer took place, the 180,000 in funds have since moved on to multiple other addresses. Due to the size of transfer, age of the original addresses, as well as continual movement of the bitcoins, it has led to speculation of activity from an early adopter or company, who may be engaged of spreading funds around for an eventual sale.

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Among theories is a connection to MtGox and its CEO Mark Karpeles.  Tracking the origination of the funds to 2011 leads to transfers that in the past had been connected to addresses controlled by MtGox.  However, while transfers are public on the blockchain, deciphering ownership after a transaction occurs is a game of speculation due to lacking true knowledge whether the holders of the new addresses are in fact the same or different people.  As such, once a transfer is one place removed from a known owner, there is little other than speculation in deciphering its current owners.

MtGox API Movement 

However, due to the original connections to MtGox, as well as trading data from its API showing movement today, despite the website and exchange being closed, it has led to debate of whether insiders at that company are involved with transferring bitcoins.  In this regard, such an event could mean both positive or negative connotations.  Among those that believe that MtGox is in control of missing customer bitcoins but had lost private keys of its cold storage addresses, today’s transactions could be interpreted as them achieving success in reaccessing a portion of those funds.  On the other hand, the transactions may be the result of insiders shuttling funds out of the company’s control before a court ordered liquidation seizes control of all assets.

Satoshi?

Whenever such an transaction occurs from older addresses, it will always lead to whether it is connected to Satoshi Nakamoto, who is rumored to be in control of around $400 million in bitcoins.  This possible connection to Nakamoto has been especially highlited now due to the current media attention on his identity, as well as an old forum account attributed to him posting a message yesterday that he isn’t Dorian Nakamoto.

On this, DC Magnates contacted Blockr for their opinion.  Answering, a representative from the Blockr team stated to us that “We are following the Satoshi Nakamoto story and we can’t confirm that he is the person behind this transaction.”  They added that “It looks like someone has started using his old wallet that he might have forgot he had. It’s been dormant for almost 2 and a half years when BTC was valued $2-$3.”

In terms of rationale behind the transfer, the Blockr team concluded that “a question that pops up is what this person will do with it since markets probably cannot sell this amount of coins instantly.”

Additional resources:

• Largest bitcoin addresses
• Largest block transactions