Would You Dare Send $1 Billion in a Mouse Click?

A popular bot which tracks the movement of large amounts of cryptocurrency, Whale Alert, pinged today that someone had transferred upwards of 94,000 BTC, worth over $1 billion, to a single address. The transaction cost $600 in fees. The bigger question is, however, would you trust Bitcoin’s network to transfer over $1 billion with a single mouse click? 

$1 Billion in BTC Transferred in a Single Transaction

Someone transferred 94,504 BTC from multiple addresses to a single one on September 6. The receiving wallet is an unknown one which appears to have been created today, specifically for this transaction. 

The dollar value of the BTC sent is upwards of $1 billion, which, needless to say, is a substantial amount of money. The cost of the transaction was $600 in fees, and it had received 31 confirmations at the time of writing. 

While Bitcoin’s network has seen a significant increase in its hash rate, which is a sign that it’s getting stronger and more secure, sending $1 billion in BTC definitely requires courage. There’s no central institution guaranteeing the transfer, and if something goes wrong, there’s no one who could do anything.

Yesterday, Bitcoin’s network marked yet another all-time high in terms of its hash rate which surpassed 88 quintillion TH/s. 

And while the network might provide zero insurance of the funds being transferred, it’s also important to note that there’s no banking institution that would have transferred that amount for as little as $600. Moreover, the transaction was peer-to-peer and executed in a matter of minutes, which would also have been impossible if using a regular bank. 

The Reason for the Transfer? 

It’s impossible to identify the reason behind this transfer. However, there is plenty of speculation. 

Some people believe that the funds were moved in order to be stored in Bakkt’s warehouse. The Bitcoin futures contract trading platform is scheduled to launch on September 23, but its warehousing solution will begin accepting cryptocurrency deposits today. 

Of course, that’s a wild guess. The wallet doesn’t seem to belong to any exchange. 

Apart from that large transaction, there have been a few smaller ones to the same receiving address, and its current received balance stands at 94,505 BTC.