$8B BTC Movements May Have Been Preceded by Covert Bitcoin Cash Test

Movements of bitcoin currency (BCH) took spot amid the mysterious transfers of $8.5 cardinal worthy of ‘Satoshi-era’ bitcoin precocious Friday.

Conor Grogan, a manager astatine Coinbase, flagged a suspicious BCH transaction of implicit 10,000 tokens (worth astir $5 cardinal astatine existent prices) tied to 1 of the whale wallets hours earlier the main transfers began.

The determination raised the anticipation that idiosyncratic whitethorn person gained entree to bequest backstage keys and softly tested them earlier initiating the monolithic BTC movements.

“There is simply a anticipation that the proprietor was investigating the backstage cardinal successful a mode that wouldn't get noticed,” Grogan posted connected X. “BCH isn't monitored heavy by whale-watching services.”

Eight wallets that had been dormant since 2011 each transferred 10,000 BTC to caller SegWit addresses connected Friday, implicit 14 years aft initially receiving bitcoin successful what is present colloquially known arsenic the network’s “Satoshi era.”

None of the wallets have, truthful far, been linked to immoderate known entity oregon company, but the timing, scale, and manual quality of the transfers person acceptable disconnected alarm bells.

Grogan pointed retired that lone 1 BCH code associated with the BTC clump was touched. “Why not expanse the others?” helium asked. “It implies the histrion whitethorn not person afloat access.”

But the timing is uncanny: conscionable 1 hr aft the BCH trial transfer, the archetypal of the 80,000 BTC started to determination — triggering the largest Satoshi-era bitcoin movements ever recorded.

So far, the caller bitcoin addresses haven’t forwarded funds further oregon deposited them connected exchanges. But the BCH trial could bespeak idiosyncratic was probing earlier executing a coordinated transfer, perchance to debar triggering whale alerts oregon spooking the market.

Other theories widen from a backstage cardinal leak to adjacent a quantum computing attack.

Bitcoin’s aboriginal addresses, particularly Pay‑to‑Public‑Key (P2PK) formats, exposure nationalist keys aft their archetypal transaction — erstwhile available, they go theoretically crackable utilizing Shor's algorithm if large-scale quantum hardware materializes.

(Dormant wallets that person ne'er revealed their nationalist cardinal are harmless adjacent successful a quantum aboriginal arsenic nary nationalist cardinal exists to reverse-engineer.)

As such, the information that lone 1 associated BCH wallet moved during investigating portion the others remained untouched suggests constricted access.