Why do nearly two million Bitcoin still lie untouched despite the growing interest in cryptocurrency and the booming value of the coin? Join us as we look into the Zombie Coin phenomena and a recent multi-million dollar resurrection.
It is common in the investment world for people to buy stocks and bonds and hold them for decades, in some cases passing on the investment portfolio to their heirs. Given that Bitcoin is an investment vehicle, albeit a volatile one, the same behaviours are seen among Bitcoin wallets.
Why the Long Wait?
With Bitcoin breaking through the $30,000 valuation ceiling there has been an increased interest in these holding accounts given their enormous value. Particularly because with Bitcoin hitting these lifetime highs one would expect to see some movement to aimed at cashing in on the owner’s windfall.
Stories of lost Bitcoin wallets and of course the legend of Satoshi’s irretrievable fortune become part of the mainstream narrative each time the virtual coin soars in value, yet millions of coins go unsold or even unchecked.
Millions of Zombie Coins
Among these holding accounts, some have been dormant for more than a decade, the Bitcoin held in these accounts have become affectionately known as Zombie Coins in the industry.
While the exact number of Bitcoin held in these sleeping coin accounts is hard to pin down the market analysts at Glassnode tweeted the following insight:
“1.78 million bitcoins have never left their miner address. That is 9.5% of the circulating #Bitcoin supply. Our analysis shows that 98% of those coins were mined more than 7 years ago, and 94% more than 10 years ago. Most could be lost forever.”
Given that Bitcoin is worth over $30,000 these nearly two million dormant coins represent a staggering amount on untapped wealth. It is only thanks to the market dominance of Bitcoin that these dormant coins have value, smaller cryptocurrencies that lapsed into ‘zombie’ status have actually been delisted by exchanges.
There Is Life in These Old Bones
In the wake of the conspiracy theories, wild claims of ownership and general buzz caused online by the rising value of the digital coin and the reality of this unclaimed wealth Bitcoin surprised everyone by posting an article claiming some of these zombie coins were showing signs of life.
Bitcoin posted saying:
“All of the block rewards from 2010 spent on Sunday morning stemmed from Coinbase rewards issued between August and October ten years ago. The rewards from 2010 include approximately 1,000 BTC worth more than $27 million using today’s exchange rates.”
The transactions in question were made by a Satoshi-era miner, who moved a total of 21 block rewards originally mined in 2010. The miner also then spent the accumulated cash block rewards which held a value of $345,000. In total, the Hodler moved over $27 million worth of Bitcoin in less than 24 hours.
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