Bitcoin prices retreated Wednesday afternoon amid speculation that a long-abandoned block of coins, with links to the purported creator of the virtual asset, has just changed hands.
A Twitter account that was supposed to issue tweet alerts when coins were linked to a specific address trade, identified a virtual batch trade that “may” be attached to Satoshi Nakamoto, the person or persons who wrote the software code for the digital currency back in 2009. Nakamoto’s identity has long been speculated but bitcoin’s initiator has never been validated.
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About 11 years ago, he created, or mined, the original batch of bitcoins widely known as the genesis block.
The tweet suggests that the batch of some 40 or 50 bitcoins that changed hands on Wednesday were mined within the first month of bitcoin’s creation.
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To be sure, the anonymous nature of bitcoin makes it impossible to identify the owner of the coins but the technology underlying bitcoin makes tracking the addresses of some blocks of coins possible.
Sleuthing for coins tied to the genuineness of the digital asset has become a regular pastime in the crypto community. Tracking large blocks of bitcoin also helps understand the practices of those who hold significant influence on bitcoin prices by tinting their holdings.
Bitcoin futures, representing one bitcoin, were off 1.3% on Wednesday afternoon, with US May trading most active: BTCK20
BTC.1,
at $ 9,550, while BTCUSD bitcoin spot prices,
off 1.8% at $ 9,525, according to data from CoinDesk.
Bitcoin futures are up more than 32% so far in 2020, and had been trading at an intervention peak at $ 9,895 on Wednesday before settling lower.
Several industry participants have pointed out that the fact that the bitcoins were vintage in 2009 does not necessarily mean they are affiliated with Nakamoto.
However, that did not preclude interest in a bitcoin boom on Twitter, with the term “satoshi” becoming a viral term on the social media platform Twitter on Wednesday afternoon.
Bitcoin was created as an alternative payment system 11 years ago, one that operated anonymously and peer-to-peer, eliminating the so-called trusted third party.
The cryptocurrency was born amid concerns that modern currency is being produced by central banks that print fiat currencies to boost economic growth – a scene that has gained increasing traction amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Supporters of bitcoin argue that because the digital asset is devolved from central banks or governments, individuals can conduct transactions without an intermediary. That’s part of bitcoin’s appeal.
However, the nascent asset has not made a significant price rise since hitting the December 2017 peak near $ 20,000.
Critics also point to the cryptocurrency’s association with money laundering as one of its biggest drawbacks. So far, bitcoin has not achieved sufficient scalability to make it a legitimate currency much less a store of value, other opponents say.
That said, bitcoin has managed to hold its own relative to gold so far this year, with the future of GC00 gold,
up 15% in the year to date. In comparison, the S&P 500 SPX index,
down 8.1% so far this year and DJIA Dow Jones Industrial Average,
off almost 14% after a decline caused by coronavirus brought the equity markets to their knees in March.
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