New information about the movement of large amounts of bitcoin originally from a well-known bitcoin address (15ihHoGs3onQBNnEH8afDFGvou9nD62Hm7) has been unearthed by Redditor u/sick_silk. The Reddit user, who has been following funds from the bitcoin address, discovered that some bitcoins had been sent to addresses belonging to Binance, Bitfinex and Bitmex exchanges.
The story of a sudden movement of $800 million from the formerly inactive 111,000 BTC address, covered extensively by CryptoGlobe, relates that the address is likely owned by DPR of the defunct Silk Road, and/or other top administrators of the marketplace.
What Was Transferred and Why
U/sick_silk’s investigations revealed that 14% of the funds from the original source i.e 15,593 BTC ( $113 million) were sent to Bitfinex and Binance bitcoin wallets.
In the 7-day period between 24th August and 2nd September, 11,114 BTC ($81 million) out of the 15,593 BTC was also sent to Bitfinex wallet 1Kr6QSydW9bFQG1mXiPNNu6WpJGmUa9i1g
The Binance wallet 1NDyJtNTjmwk5xPNhjgAMu4HDHigtobu1s also received 4421 BTC ($32 million) mostly between 21st August and 2nd September, while at least 210 BTC ($1.5 million) was also transferred to Bitmex wallets owned by Bitmex Exchange.
It was suggested by u/sick_silk that the funds were being moved to the 3 exchanges in an attempt to exchange them for altcoins, mix the coins in order to make them difficult to trace, or it was simply the case that the owner(s) were trying to sell his or her coins.
No Negative Effect on Bitcoin Price
Unlike previous well-publicised attempts to sell large amounts of bitcoin, this transfer of funds to Binance, Bitfinex, and Bitmex seemed to have no negative impact whatsoever on the bitcoin price as it soared above $7,000 once again on 31st August and reached $7,320 at the time of writing.
