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Sleeping beauty Bitcoin wallets wake up after 14 years to the tune of $2B

(www.marketwatch.com)
191 points aorloff | 12 comments | 04 Jul 25 18:41 UTC | HN request time: 0.043s | source | bottom
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mattlondon ◴[04 Jul 25 19:06 UTC] No.44467062[source]▶
Maybe that guy who was digging up a landfill to find his old HDD finally found it!

Seriously though, what are the odds that someone has been quietly spending 10s/100s of millions in cloud compute to brute force the keys for old wallets?

replies(12): >>44467081 #>>44467123 #>>44467396 #>>44467750 #>>44469927 #>>44470471 #>>44470497 #>>44470630 #>>44470975 #>>44471691 #>>44471790 #>>44472481 #
bravoetch ◴[04 Jul 25 19:09 UTC] No.44467081[source]▶
I would say the odds are zero because that's the likelihood of being able to brute-force anything in the key space.
replies(2): >>44467180 #>>44477232 #
handfuloflight ◴[04 Jul 25 19:26 UTC] No.44467180[source]▶
It's not zero. https://lbc.cryptoguru.org/trophies
replies(1): >>44467374 #
onlyrealcuzzo ◴[04 Jul 25 19:54 UTC] No.44467374{3}[source]▶
It's close enough.

There are 200 million+ BTC wallets.

They've found 54 out of 200 million+ or about 0.00002% of wallets - in how many years?

replies(2): >>44467393 #>>44469911 #
handfuloflight ◴[04 Jul 25 19:57 UTC] No.44467393[source]▶
How does the equation change with $100m of cloud or GPU compute as GP speculated? These are all hobbyists.
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onlyrealcuzzo ◴[04 Jul 25 20:14 UTC] No.44467531[source]▶
It changes that if you attempt to liquidate that much BTC, BTC crashes and you've got 90% less money than you hoped for.
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1. handfuloflight ◴[04 Jul 25 20:16 UTC] No.44467542[source]▶
Do you really think they have no notion of liquidity? Why would they attempt to liquidate it all at once?
replies(3): >>44467605 #>>44467622 #>>44470217 #
2. cj ◴[04 Jul 25 20:25 UTC] No.44467605[source]▶
They could also do a private party transaction to sell the coins outside of an exchange, in order to hide the sale and also hide the price of the tokens sold.

This is common practice in the stock market, called "dark pools" [0]

> Dark pools came about primarily to facilitate block trading by institutional investors who did not wish to impact the markets with their large orders and obtain adverse prices for their trades.

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/050614/introdu...

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3. onlyrealcuzzo ◴[04 Jul 25 20:27 UTC] No.44467622[source]▶
Just the fear of future liquidation would eventually severely crash BTC.
replies(2): >>44467627 #>>44467819 #
4. handfuloflight ◴[04 Jul 25 20:28 UTC] No.44467627[source]▶
Like it's crashing now on this news?
replies(1): >>44467689 #
5. onlyrealcuzzo ◴[04 Jul 25 20:37 UTC] No.44467689{3}[source]▶
There's ~$188B in Satoshi era wallets.

While ~$8B is huge news, due to the potential that all ~$188B might be in play, when most investors probably expected it was not prior to this - or at least the probability was low enough to barely factor, it's unlikely to crash BTC.

Further, moving BTC is one thing. Showing signs of liquidation is another.

That much should be able to get liquidated intelligently without moving the market.

replies(1): >>44467825 #
6. phil21 ◴[04 Jul 25 20:45 UTC] No.44467757[source]▶
The vast majority of BTC transactions are done this way. Anything of any size is traded via OTC desks or other more private avenues.
7. paulpauper ◴[04 Jul 25 20:55 UTC] No.44467819[source]▶
yeah, people think it's the selling that makes the price fall. it is the anticipation . markets are forward looking
8. paulpauper ◴[04 Jul 25 20:55 UTC] No.44467825{4}[source]▶
It depends how it's sold. Market orders would have more impact than OTC .
9. usrusr ◴[04 Jul 25 20:56 UTC] No.44467827[source]▶
Outside, as in off the blockchain? That would mean that after the transaction, both sides would know the key to the wallet and there would be a race about who lights up a transaction first.
replies(1): >>44468124 #
10. cj ◴[04 Jul 25 21:50 UTC] No.44468124{3}[source]▶
After the transaction, you can still send the bitcoin to the purchaser's wallet.

But since the purchase itself happens off exchange, there's no record of how much the coins were sold for, so no impact on market price.

replies(1): >>44469819 #
11. sokoloff ◴[05 Jul 25 03:01 UTC] No.44469819{4}[source]▶
A large wallet that’s been dormant for years suddenly becoming active will tend to pressure the price lower from the implied increase in liquid supply and fear that the wallet will continue to distribute coins.

It’s not just the printing of transaction price that can affect the market.

12. beefnugs ◴[05 Jul 25 05:10 UTC] No.44470217[source]▶
Because maybe this isn't satoshi waking up, but finally those kidnappers hit that poor guy in the latest "we found satoshi" documentary