Bitcoin worth $5,000 (about 7.4 million won) has newly flowed into a dormant wallet associated with Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto.

On July 23 (local time), blockchain media outlet U.Today reported that the funds were sent from a Revolut co-owned hot wallet, making it difficult to identify the sender.

A transaction flow shown on on-chain tracking platform Arkham indicates the sender first tested the address with transfers worth a few cents, then added 0.033 BTC worth about $2,170 (about 3.2 million won). The total sent over multiple transfers was tallied at about $5,000.

The receiving wallet is part of a so-called “Patoshi” address cluster. This cluster is a linked wallet structure of thousands of addresses believed to have been used by Satoshi for mining in Bitcoin’s early days. The cluster still holds 1.11 million BTC. At a Bitcoin price of about $64,364, it is valued at about $71.1 billion (about 104.94 trillion won). During the 2024-2025 market rally, the wallet value at times exceeded $110 billion (about 162.36 trillion won).

The problem is that the latest transfer is effectively impossible to recover. Because of early Bitcoin block encoding methods and the fact that the private keys for Satoshi-related addresses disappeared and have never been used, the incoming coins remain unrecoverable. Sending funds to a Satoshi wallet is like permanently burning one’s money.

Several possibilities are being discussed as to why the funds were sent. These include a symbolic donation expressing gratitude to the creator’s address, seeking attention by using an address cluster monitored by automated tracking systems, and a simple mistake during an address copy process. In 2024, $1.2 million (about 1.771 billion won) flowed into the same cluster, and $150,000 (about 220,000,000 won) did so in February this year.

The market impact was limited. Because the transaction involved external funds flowing into Satoshi-related wallets rather than movement of existing holdings, its impact on the broader industry was not large. The key variable the market is watching remains whether Satoshi will actually move the large Bitcoin holdings untouched since 2009.

Satoshi-related wallets carry meaning beyond a simple dormant address. Because the holdings stored in the cluster account for a meaningful share of total Bitcoin supply, confirmation of an outgoing transaction could heighten concerns about the creator’s return or the possibility of large-scale selling. Still, this transaction was a deposit of external funds into the wallet, and there is no basis to view it as a sign that Satoshi accessed the wallet or is seeking to dispose of holdings. With funds added to an address where the private key is not used, the amount of effectively tradable Bitcoin has in effect declined slightly.

The industry is expected to keep watching for outgoing transactions from Satoshi-related addresses. If Bitcoin believed to be early mining rewards actually moves, the impact on market sentiment and prices could be far larger than that of this small deposit.