Record-Breaking Bitcoin Sale May Be Tied to 2011 Wallet Scandal
A massive Bitcoin transfer that shook the crypto world may have deeper roots than previously thought.
A staggering 80,000 Bitcoin—worth over $9 billion—has been moved in what Galaxy Digital calls one of the largest nominal BTC transactions in history. While the company states the sale was part of a legacy planning strategy for a Satoshi-era investor, one crypto analyst believes there may be far more to the story.
In a landmark move for the crypto world, Galaxy facilitated the massive sale on behalf of a client said to be an early adopter. But the origins of those coins are now under intense scrutiny.
Ki Young Ju, CEO of blockchain analytics firm CryptoQuant, shared a striking theory: the BTC in question may trace back to wallets linked to MyBitcoin, one of the earliest custodial services in the crypto space. The service collapsed in 2011 after a hack, and the wallets involved in this recent transfer had been dormant since April of that year—just months before the platform’s downfall.
According to Ju, there’s a strong possibility the coins were either controlled by the hacker or by MyBitcoin’s reclusive founder, Tom Williams. The revelation raises questions about ownership and whether Galaxy Digital performed any forensic checks on the source of the funds.
Ju suspects Galaxy may have acquired the Bitcoin from the mysterious wallets, though the firm has not publicly addressed the provenance of the assets. Instead, Galaxy emphasized that the sale was conducted on behalf of a legacy holder from Bitcoin’s earliest days—describing the transaction as a key part of that individual’s estate planning.
This historic movement of dormant coins comes amid a broader trend of decade-old BTC resurfacing. With early whales returning to the scene, the spotlight is now on the untold backstories behind these monumental transactions—and the unanswered questions they leave behind.
Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coindoo and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.
