CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju has linked the recently announced 80,000 BTC transaction by Galaxy Digital to the collapsed MyBitcoin exchange, which shut down in 2011.
Galaxy Digital carried out one of the largest BTC transactions in history last week, helping a client sell about 80,000 BTC worth $9 billion in today’s market. The platform described the owner of the cache as a “satoshi-era investor” in their press release. However, the CryptoQuant founder believes that the anonymous holder is Tom Williams, the founder of the MyBitcoin exchange. “It seems Galaxy Digital bought the #Bitcoin from them, but I’m not sure if they did any forensics,” the CryptoQuant CEO said on X.
CryptoQuant CEO links huge Bitcoin to MyBitcoin
MyBitcoin was an exchange that was founded in 2010 by an anonymous person, who would soon be known as Tom Williams. According to the Internet Archive, the exchange shut down unexpectedly in August 2011, disappearing with tens of thousands of BTC. At that time, MyBitcoin held 154,406 BTC in its custody. Williams said around 51% of that—equivalent to 78,747 BTC—went missing. That figure is pretty close to Galaxy Digital’s recent “largest notional bitcoin transactions.”
An archived page of BetaBeat showed that a user named Mbzastava talked about the incident, suspecting the platform. “There is no proof that MyBitCoin themselves did not perpetrate the hack and theft of bitcoins. It was very obvious to me upon the inception of MyBitCoin.com that the premise was to construct a bitcoin ‘honeypot.’”
According to a previous report, a whale moved about 80,000 BTC on July 4 from about eight connected wallets in a day. At the time, it was unclear if the whale was upgrading its wallet or selling off their cache. At the time, Arkham Intelligence data showed that the whale had held the tokens for about 14 years, dating it back to around April or May 2011. MyBitcoin shut down months after the estimated date, closely aligning the on-chain data with the historical timeline.
Galaxy Digital published the press release as an OP_RETURN, adding it to an irrelevant transaction on the blockchain. OP_RETURN is an operation in Bitcoin’s scripting language that allows users to add text to a transaction. The firm said in the release that the $9 billion transaction was “part of the investor’s broader estate planning strategy.”
The transaction either took place by handing over private keys or during the July 4 on-chain movement. The firm’s head of research said the 80,000 Bitcoin transaction had no blockchain breadcrumbs. The sale was carried out by Galaxy Digital CEO, Mike Novogratz, who has not provided further comments or talked about the sale even on his last appearance on CNBC.
