4th Biggest Bitcoin Wallet Is Now Empty

Bitcoin wallet containing $1 Billion in Bitcoin which is also the world’s 4th richest wallet got emptied after being inactive for years. 

The question is whether it was a hack or a long-term hodler making moves?

Around 69.369 bitcoins moved from a legacy wallet to a new native SegWit format address (a more modern format aimed at optimizing transactions by lowering their transaction fees).

There is no detail regarding the wallet. Nobody knows who has moved it, owns it, or why moved. It was the 4th largest bitcoin wallet it remained intact thanks to the magic of the cryptography that powers the Bitcoin blockchain.

On 3rd November 2020, the wallet was emptied by moving 69,369 bitcoins to address 1HQ3Go3ggs8pFnXuHVHRytPCq5fGG8Hbhx to the address bc1qa5wkgaew2dkv56kfvj49j0av5nml45x9ek9hz6. The transaction was equivalent to $972 million, at the time of writing. 

The wallet owner spent less than an hour sending almost $1 billion, paying 12 bucks for the operation without anyone asking for KYC, AML, or any other complicated policy.

In the world of crypto, it is normal for users to lose or forget the keys to their Bitcoin wallets. Anything from damaged disks, corrupted zips to simple human errors have caused losses ranging from a few cents to several million dollars. That’s what makes custodial services attractive for amateurs.

It is normal for crypto users to lose or forget the keys to their Bitcoin wallets in the world of crypto. 

However, after the boom of bitcoin, people have been looking for ways to access this potential source of free wealth. There are some people who go through hypnosis sessions to remember the password to that old Bitcoin wallet from 2010. 

The moving of the bitcoin has two possible explanations.

In the first case, the owner of the wallet must have decided to move his bitcoins to a more secure place and change wallets. While in other cases, someone has got access to the wallet.