Late in the US evening, as night came and asia woke up, a major Bitcoin Outflow from Binance.
A quick analysis showed some correlation between the news, a reopening to China’s cryptocurrency trading (https://www.cdex.cn/), and from the chart showing correlation with price:
Closed analysis? Not exactly. Onchain data is now within everyone’s reach, and similar movements can trigger euphoria and price movements, it has happened many times before . Manipulation is part of the system, and this is what has most likely happened.
Going to analyze the movement we can see that the outflow starts from a Binance address that is well integrated into the Binance ecosystem, i.e., any movement to and from occurred exclusively from and to Binance addresses.
What does not add up, and what makes this most likely an internal Binance movement, is that the outflow did not occur from the classic Hot Wallet, but occurred from a secondary Cold Wallet, emptied, and with the routing of the total amount of Bitcoins to a virgin address, but with a typical trace and repeatedly used by Binance to “mark” its addresses, this for example has happened before during Audits.
We can therefore regard it as an internal movement that has nothing to do with accumulation.
What should give pause for thought is yet another huge internal Binance move, from a known Binance address to a virgin address, in the middle of the European night and late in the U.S. evening with markets closed, with no advance notice of movement.
The obvious attempts at manipulation, even in light of connections and mutual support with opaque onchain services, should make users reflect on which onchain services should be deemed trustworthy, transparent, and which ones lend themselves to power plays and collusion with the sole purpose of misleading users and draining them of their Satoshi.
As explained in the previous post (which you can read here if you haven’t), a mysterious user named OneSignature appeared on the BitcoinTalk forum, a historic forum where there are numerous Satoshi posts, signing an address with bitcoin mined in 2009 and an outgoing transaction in 2011. The address (1NChfewU45oy7Dgn51HwkBFSixaTnyakfj) has block mining TX 1018. The signature is the most dated/oldest ever to appear on a bitcoin address.
The (few) certainties
Let us start with the few certainties, namely the signature and its verification.
We have noticed some unnecessary discussions about the supposed invalidity of the signature, and let’s settle that right away; the signature is authentic. We used Electrum connected to a Bitcoin full node, but you could use hundreds of other different methods; the signature is certainly authentic. After making sure that the signature is authentic, let’s take a closer look at the blockchain to understand more about it.
The analysis of blockchain
The address signed by OneSignature contained 50 Bitcoin that are aggregated to the address 1LseHYUYUXkL4Jdd4YTTXvWNqDceTdQXrt along with another 1,950 BTC, this occurs in 2011.
From signed address to aggregation
The Bitstamp inflow
Next, some transactions occur that deserve attention for analysis. Some Bitcoin are deposited at the address 17jz6XcXP2LPqS8gYmT2pkNJocUDzbpQuM traceable to a Bitstamp.net deposit address. On the same deposit address it is also possible to reconstruct most of the additional addresses owned by the same owner.
A total of 9,106 Bitcoins are deposited at the Bitstamp address, all transactions traceable to the same owner, and deposit activity occurs through December 22, 2014. Almost all of the Bitcoin are mining rewards.
From MtGox further transactions to the address 1QY4sSvRw2jS6QPn7GjYLaWwW73u8MLsb traceable to SilkRoadMarketplace, the famous Darknet marketplace for which Ross Ulbricht is now serving a life sentence.
Below is a complete representation of the flow.
We can exclude that OneSignature is Satoshi
Satoshi is a careful person, manic about privacy. The chances that OneSignature could be Satoshi in my opinion are ZERO. Satoshi would never, with such superficiality, leave such obvious traces, especially to two CEX exchanges that can easily identify his identity. It is not in his philosophy and it is not in his way of acting, always attentive to every single detail since the early days and he would never have committed such trivialities.
But we continue to explore further
Patoshi signature
If all these clues are not enough, further verification clues may come from independent researcher Sergio Demian Lerner. It has carried out an in-depth analysis on the possible blocks extracted from Satoshi, they are vulgarly called Patoshi Block.
Explained in a very simplified way, Satoshi most likely used a different mining software than the one initially distributed, so it was possible through traces left behind in block mining to reconstruct what are most likely blocks mined by Satoshi.
If we go to analyze block 1018, which is the one precisely signed by OneSignature, it does not show up among the possible Satoshi extracted blocks:
Screenshot Source : http://satoshiblocks.info/
Conclusion. Where did that signature come from and why? The possible idea of NFTs
One of the most likely explanations is that someone may have sniffed out a business opportunity: converting old BTC addresses to NFTs and then selling them. Such old types of addresses may acquire archaeological value. You may not even need to own the private key to own the NFT. You can learn more about the idea in this post. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5425241
An idea that I think is difficult to develop, but which confirms for us a doubt:
As we can see from the dormant address chart, 6522 dormant bitcoin were moved today. It is among the most important movements in the last 3 months, and it is one of the most important movements in a single transaction and single address.
Source screenshot : Bitinfocharst.com
The address is : 1LB8BHdaRjeRsxz8SqiAFFQLjXkzCKsgvX
As we can see from the dormant address chart, 1000 dormant bitcoins were moved today.
Among these 1,000 bitcoins, 50 caught the eye. These 50 bitcoins have been standing still since May 2010, more than 12 years.
These bitcoins have been mined and have no previous history, until now.
Source screenshot : Bitinfocharst.com
The address is : 1LB8BHdaRjeRsxz8SqiAFFQLjXkzCKsgvX
The transaction was sent to a temporary address, and then to an address containing 25 bitcoin on June 23, 2022, a sign that it is most likely an entity that purchased over the counter (OTC, off exchanges or with exchanges acting as a middleman); these are typical movements of entities, small or large, that accumulate over the long term.
Bitcoin that have no previous transaction history are very attractive to institutional entities, banks, states, companies, this is because it frees them from any possibility of abnormal transactions. Generally these bitcoin have different prices, often higher than market prices.
This transaction does not currently appear to be sent to a known exchange address.
