218
Sleeping beauty bitcoin wallets wake up after 14 years to the tune of $2 billion
(www.morningstar.com)
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
218 points (95.8% liked)
Technology
72360 readers
3556 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Two wallets. 10k BTC each. These wallets were created back when BTC was 78¢. When you spend $10k the IRS might ask questions. If you are "structuring" correctly you avoid spending $9,999 and $1 within a short time span or even in the same reporting period. 10k BTC back then was something you could buy that looked like it wasn't $10k but was really close. Spend it twice in two different wallets and if there are enough other transactions no one will notice.
Anytime you see a transaction or set of transactions that add up to or are just shy of 10k USD, BTC or pretty much anything, there should be a little bell that dings in your head and causes you to think "this person is clearly thinking about US tax reporting laws and trying to dodge them."
Who had all that money back in 2011 that decided that now was the time to tap those wallets that are worth a billion each? Obviously someone that hasn't needed the money until now. Someone that is planning on spending up to 2 billion. But not right away because if you try to sell 20k BTC in a hurry it will draw attention and potentially destabilize the currency. But you could sell it all off over the next year or longer without flooding the market.
Who wants to spend up to $2 billion in the next year? What could you buy with that kind of money? Elon musk spent ~$250 million getting Trump elected. That's just an eighth of $2B. You could buy a lot of super PAC power with $2B. You could bankroll the primarying of every Republican that voted for OBBB. Weird that these wallets were dusted off so close to Elon saying he would primary anyone that voted for OBBB, and he has a strong affinity for crypto, and he had enough money in 2011 to buy that much BCT on a whim, and that he wouldn't have had to touch it to pay other bills as BTC went from 78¢ to more than $100,000 over the last 14 years.
I wonder who these wallets belong to and what they will be used for?
This is what conspiracy thinking looks like. It's me. I'm the one conspiracy thinking.
Ross Ulbricht