Someone moved $1 billion in a single bitcoin transaction

Enlarge / Holders of large amounts of bitcoin are known as "whales." (credit: Jenny Evans/Getty Images)

Late on Thursday night, US Eastern time, someone made one of the biggest transactions in bitcoin history: 94,504 bitcoins. At the then-current bitcoin price of around $10,600, this transaction was worth almost exactly $1 billion. It's now worth around $967 million.

Bitcoin's shared transaction ledger is open, but addresses are anonymous by default. As a result, we know that the transaction occurred, but we don't know who made it or why. One analysis indicated that at least a third of the money comes from Huobi Global, a cryptocurrency exchange based in Singapore. So the transaction could reflect big withdrawals from a Huobi customer-or it could mean that Huobi itself was consolidating some of its deposits.

This isn't the largest transaction in bitcoin terms. In 2013, for example, someone moved 194,993 bitcoins in a single transaction. But bitcoins were much less valuable back then, so the transaction was only valued at around $150 million.

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