Bitcoin price sliding further this past week is making investors jittery. But a whale account that has woken up after nine years could offer a valuable lesson in cryptocurrency investment. The account that held 900 Bitcoins when it went dormant in 2012 is now active. It’s impossible to ascertain what made the owner of the account come out of hibernation, or if the account has been hacked and accessed by someone else. But for those worried about potential losses in the short term, especially since the recent market crash, this shows why holding on to your investment in the long term could reap unfathomable gains.
Whale accounts in the crypto world mean individuals or entities holding large amounts of a crypto coin. These accounts are sometimes criticised for becoming too powerful to influence the valuation of a digital currency. When the 900 Bitcoins were first transferred to the account on August 17, 2012, their total valuation was $12,778 (Rs 934,356). The dormant address activated recently is now worth nearly $33 million (roughly Rs. 242 crore). In nine years the value of the mysterious account’s investment has jumped more than 2,000 times, showing the importance of holding and keeping faith in your cryptocurrency investments for a long time. Bitcoin price in India reached an all-time high earlier this year.
It’s not the only whale account that has seen a stupendous rise in its value. Previously, another whale account holding billions worth of Dogecoin had come into focus. Dogecoin address “DH5yaieqoZN36fDVciNyRueRGvGLR3mr7L” apparently holds nearly $12 billion (roughly Rs. 8,752 crore) worth of digital currency. The investor has around 3,671 crore Dogecoins, which is about 28 per cent of the cryptocurrency’s current supply. Dogecoin price in India has quadrupled in the last two months, but investors have also been hit hard by the massive fluctuations in its value owning to the volatility in the cryptocurrency market.
Bitcoin was introduced by a person said to be named Satoshi Nakamoto – his identity remains a mystery – in 2008 as arguably the first decentralised digital currency. In January 2009, the blockchain was launched when the first block, called the genesis block, was mined. In the same month, the first test transaction of Bitcoin took place. Bitcoin became available in exchanges in 2010.
At the time of writing this report, Bitcoin was trading at $36,657.86 (Rs. 2.6 lakh), according to CoinDesk. It has a market capitalisation of close to $685.80 billion (roughly Rs. 500,0000 crore).