Satoshi-era wallet moves $16M in Bitcoin for the FIRST TIME IN 15 YEARS | Bitcoin News by CoinCorner

Transcript

It's been a mixed week as Germany shut down 47 crypto exchanges linked to criminal activity. Meanwhile, a state in the US has taken a bold move to integrate Bitcoin and is now accepting Bitcoin payments for state services. Additionally, a Satoshi-era Bitcoin wallet moved £16 million worth of Bitcoin, causing some to speculate that Satoshi could be back.

Moving on to our first story: governments in the US are starting to show support for the integration of Bitcoin, as Louisiana has become one of the first US states to accept Bitcoin for government payments. State Treasurer John Fleming MD has announced that the state government will now accept Bitcoin, Lightning, and USD Coin as valid forms of payment for state services. He described it as a crucial step in modernising government operations, stating: "In today's digital age, government systems must evolve and embrace new technologies. By introducing cryptocurrency as a payment option, we're not just innovating; we're providing our citizens with flexibility and freedom in interacting with state services."

Positive as this is in providing citizens more financial freedom and expression, the state will not actually handle any cryptocurrency; each payment will instead be converted into US dollars using BitPay. Their reasoning for this is that their systems aim to protect the state from volatility commonly associated with digital currencies. With this decision, it could be argued that the state may not be appreciating the full value of Bitcoin, and they're not quite Bitcoin maxis. However, despite this, they expect the new payment options to reduce fraud and enhance overall transaction security, making it a win-win situation.

One country that appears to be less keen on Bitcoin is Germany, which is cracking down on crypto with the closure of 47 crypto exchanges with ties to an underground criminal economy. The government has accused them of knowingly allowing an underground economy for cybercriminals to flourish, with the German prosecutors saying that these exchanges have been deliberately concealing the origin of illicitly obtained funds on a large scale through the inadequate implementation of legal requirements for combating money laundering. As well as shutting down these exchanges, the German government has also put out a clear warning on the closed-down sites to their users, stating: "We have found their servers and seized them: development servers, production servers, backup servers. We have their data, and therefore we have your data transactions, registration data, IP addresses." Intimidating as this sounds, it suggests that since cybercriminals often reside abroad, they often remain inaccessible to German law enforcement, and therefore widespread prosecution is unlikely to be possible.

But it's not just Germany that is trying to clamp down on crypto. In China, it's been revealed that, despite having a blanket ban on crypto and associated mining operations, China based mining pools still control over 55% of the network's hash rate. This shows just how difficult it is to enforce bans on assets like Bitcoin due to its decentralised nature. In light of this, there are rumours circulating that China is planning to add amendments to its anti money laundering regulations in 2025, which would impose stricter guidelines, making it more difficult for residents to access the market. That being said, there are conflicting rumours that China is likely to unban Bitcoin by late 2024, potentially in response to the US and its growing Bitcoin industry, where Bitcoin mining dominance is slowly shifting from China to US firms, according to Ki Young Ju, founder and CEO of CryptoQuant.

Now, shifting gears, we have more positive news this week coming from MicroStrategy, which has announced another purchase of Bitcoin worth $458 million. In a post on X, founder Michael Saylor revealed that MicroStrategy has acquired 7,420 Bitcoin at an average price of $61,200 per coin. They now hold a total of 222,120 Bitcoin purchased for $9.9 billion, which today is now worth over $16 billion. This latest announcement comes just a week after a previous purchase of $1.1 billion worth of Bitcoin, and it seems nothing can slow them down. MicroStrategy has continually borrowed money by issuing convertible senior notes to fund its Bitcoin purchases, and last week they also raised an additional $1 billion using this method with an interest rate of just 0.625%. The company is truly undertaking one of the largest speculative challenges against fiat currency in history by adding the most resilient asset to its treasury, and now other public companies are beginning to take note by trying to emulate their strategy by adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets.

Moving on to our next story, this week we've seen a Satoshi era wallet move £16 million worth of Bitcoin for the first time in 15 years in a series of five transactions from different Bitcoin wallets, totalling 250 Bitcoin. On chain data shows that these coins were generated back in January 2009, the same month that the Bitcoin network first went live. The coins had been dormant until now, causing some to speculate that the movements might be a sign that the anonymous and missing Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto has mysteriously returned in 2024. However, on-chain analysis suggests that these early blocks involved were not part of the infamous "Patoshi pattern" used to identify blocks suspected to be mined by Satoshi himself. In light of this, it is suspected that these transfers could purely be for security reasons, such as moving to a more secure wallet following a recent $230 million hack on a Bitcoin Core wallet where the private keys were leaked.

Our final story is from Brink, a non-profit organisation focused on supporting open-source Bitcoin development, which has revealed that they've contributed over $1 million to the developer community in the past year. The organisation, founded in 2020 by Bitcoin developers John Newbery and Mike Schmidt, aims to provide financial support and mentorship to developers working on the Bitcoin protocol. After receiving donations totalling approximately $2.4 million, Brink's expenditure in 2023 totalled $1.6 million, with $1.2 million of that going towards developer salaries and grants. Funding like this enables developers to focus on projects related to the improvement of the Bitcoin protocol by maintaining and reviewing the code, providing security improvements, testing infrastructure, and researching potential upgrades. It's hugely positive to see financial contributions like this, which help to develop and protect Bitcoin's decentralised network.