Bitcoin Whale Transfers 40,000 BTC For 57 Cents on BTC Network

A Bitcoin whale has transferred 40,000 BTC worth $212 million from one Bitcoin address to another on May 1st, 2019 for a mere fee of 57 cents. The discovery was made by the transaction data available on the blockchain.com The news have come at a crucial juncture where BTC network has been criticized for its comparatively slower speed and high transaction fees.

The identity of the whale is not known but there are various theories and speculations, among which one suggests that the Bitcoin whale could be a famous Bitcoin trader “Loaded” who has been speculated to have a Bitcoin stash totaling 40,000 BTC. Loaded, the speculated whale has been quite active on Bitcointalk.org, but there is no such confirmation from his side.

However, the more important topic of discussion is over the transaction fee which amounted to a mere 57 cents, for transacting Bitcoin amounting to more than 200 million US Dollar. Imagine transferring the same amount using a traditional banking service.

Another thing to note about the transaction is that it was sent from one address to another for no reason that too multiple times. This data also point towards a very significant feature of decentralized systems like BTC, where you do not need a reason to transfer Bitcoin from one account to another, and you are not answerable to anyone.

What Made the Transaction so Cheap?

The bitcoin community seems to have found why the transaction of BTC worth millions of dollars cost so less, and the answer lies in the Bitcoin address itself. The Bitcoin address first three characters were ‘bc1’, which indicates that the bitcoin address in question uses segregated witness (SegWit) protocol, which was the reason behind such a low transaction fee.

SegWit protocol was introduced back in August 2017 and currently, it accounts for around 40 percent of the total transaction on the BTC network currently.

Another theory suggests that the whale decided to move 40,000 BTC just to prove a point that people should be using SegWit address rather than a Legacy address to make BTC transaction.

Bitcoin Whales Have Started To Accumulate BItcoin

There has been a lot of talks in the decentralized world regarding the next bull run, where some suggest that we are still in the extended phase of the bearish market and another bottom is near, while many others suggest that we have already surpassed the bottom, and currently at the initial phase of the bull run.

The current BTC transfer favors the latter ones and suggests that Bitcoin whales have already accumulated BTC during the December bottom. Reports suggest that around 100 Bitcoin wallets have already accumulated a significant amount of BTC.