A bitcoin whale has moved its massive BTC fortune of 22,816 coins, at press time worth over $423 million, for a fee of little over $15, and split the funds across a series of transactions, with a major wallet receiving a mysterious message.
The whale initially moved its massive bitcoin stash to a series of addresses, splitting the funds into three wallets: one with 1,370 BTC, another with 21,446 BTC, and one with less than one coin in it. The smaller addresses appeared to have simply moved the funds across the blockchain in a series of hops, presumably to help the whale secure its funds in addresses out of the public eye.
The whale’s massive transaction splitting the funds cost less than $15 in transaction fees. At press time its larger wallet still has the full 21,446 BTC in it. This larger wallet seemingly received a message from some other BTC user. In a transaction with over 250 outputs of 547 satoshis each (about $0.10), the bitcoin whale‘s wallet received the following message:
The message told BTC users to “use [the] full power of anonymity” and pointed to a topic on Memo.sv showing users how to “create ownerless BTC/BCH/BSV addresses with special meaning.” The creator of the topic was, 175 days ago, seemingly trying to teach users how to create unowned addresses as part of a project called “how much would you donate anonymously.”
Similar transactions sharing the same message appear to have been circulating since at least September of this year. These have been traced back to a transaction on the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) blockchain with an OP_RETURN message that read:
Ownerless address with special meaning allows to show potential donations for doing desired action. It’s up to actor to recognize social requests when people are really ready to pay. See memo.sv/topic/hmwyda
On Reddit users speculated on the reasoning behind these small transactions behind sent to hundreds of addresses. Some claimed it was part of a dusting attack, in which the transactions were being sent to addresses that had previously used coin mixing services in a bid to tie them to their owner.
Others pointed out it was simply a way for the entity behind these transactions to get their guide out there. Users see a small transaction on their wallets and try to investigate where it came from. In doing so, they would come across the message to visit the Memo.sv topic.
As CryptoGlobe reported, BTC’s whale population has recently hit a new all-time high, as large holders have kept on accumulating funds. The message shared could be sending dust transaction to wallets associated with bitcoin whales.
Featured image via Pixabay.
