A batch of 100.02 Bitcoin mined in July 2010 moved on October 7 for the first time in 16 years, on-chain records show, splitting coins worth roughly $8.3 million at approximately $83,000 per BTC across two new addresses that remained unspent as of Thursday.

The transaction was confirmed at 18:52 UTC in block 970,379. It divided the stash into a 10 BTC output and a 90.02 BTC output, each sent to a fresh address. The holder paid 1,467 satoshis in fees—about $1.22 to relocate $8.3 million.

Both destination addresses use the modern bc1q format, which did not exist when the coins were mined. Nothing in the transaction identifies the owner, and transferring coins between addresses is not equivalent to selling them. Neither output had moved onward as of Thursday.

What is the provenance of the coins?

The two original mining payouts landed within days of each other: 50.02 BTC in block 70,522 on July 26, 2010, and 50 BTC in block 70,748 on July 28, 2010. A July 30, 2010 transaction merged them into the address that has now spent them.

Based on Bitbo's highest registered 2010 price for Bitcoin, the stash was worth about $29 when it was mined. The block subsidy has since been cut four times, most recently to 3.125 BTC at the April 2024 halving. A block mined today pays one-sixteenth of what those two 2010 blocks paid.

The address itself has a spending history: it sent 100 BTC twice on August 8, 2015, 100 BTC in December 2017, and 249 BTC in March 2018. Those were different coins. Bitcoin tracks money as discrete unspent outputs, so an address can spend some holdings while others sit untouched. Galaxy Research, which attributes the movement, distinguishes the address's broader activity from these specific outputs.

"We maintain a complete ledger of every single UTXO and all their historical movements (about 1.7 terabytes)," Galaxy Research said. "This address has been somewhat active in the past, but these specific coins have not moved since 2010. We track the coins."

Is this part of a wider pattern?

Coins from Bitcoin's earliest years—commonly labeled Satoshi-era after pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto—have reactivated in clusters. In February 2025, a 50 BTC batch mined at roughly $0.10 per coin moved after about 15 years, by then worth approximately $5 million. That holder skipped a test transaction.

In August, 49.97 BTC first received in July 2011, when Bitcoin traded under $15, moved after about 15 years into a wallet that analytics platform Arkham labeled as FalconX, a prime broker serving trading firms. The label alone does not confirm a sale.

Between August 16 and 26, six wallets dormant since 2011, 2012 or 2014 shifted 553.59 BTC, roughly $40 million at current prices. Two of those wallets carried tags tied to a New York lawsuit asking a court to declare 39,069 dormant addresses abandoned property.

What does the move signal?

Nothing on-chain indicates the holder has sold. The 10 BTC and 90.02 BTC outputs remain untouched, and the migration to bc1q addresses is consistent with a wallet modernization as much as with an intent to liquidate.

The practical takeaway is operational: sixteen-year-old UTXOs are surfacing in an environment where legacy wallet software, address formats and key-management practices predate current standards. Each reactivation—whether a coin join to FalconX-labeled infrastructure or a simple rekey—narrows the set of coins that can credibly be called untouched since Bitcoin's first years. Whether this wallet spends onward, or the coins sit for another decade, the blockchain will record the next move.