When someone transferred 161,500 Bitcoin (BTC) on April 10 for a fee of only 0.00010019 BTC — approximately $0.68 — the crypto world took notice.
According to blockchain transaction details, the user moved approximately $1.1 billion dollars in the cryptocurrency at the time of press. Of that amount, 15,000 BTC was sent to a wallet, while the remainder — 146,500 BTC — was returned to the original address.
Twitter user KRMA_0 was one of the first to spot the transaction, but it didn’t take long for someone to take credit for the move. In a response reaching his 15,000+ followers on Sunday, Paolo Ardoino, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Bitfinex, said the crypto exchange was responsible, attributing the move to the exchange refilling its hot wallet:
Yep, we refilled hot wallet with 15k, rest went back to original address
— Paolo Ardoino (@paoloardoino) April 10, 2020
Beating the record for highest BTC transaction
This officially makes Bitfinex’s transaction the largest one in BTC in history in terms of the dollar amount. The last time over a billion dollars in BTC was moved was on September 6, 2019 when transaction records show 94,504 BTC — $1.018 billion at the time — was transferred for a $700 fee.
However, neither was actually the largest amount of the cryptocurrency to ever be moved. That honor goes to a 500,000 BTC transaction made on November 16, 2011. Worth $1.32 million at that time, that amount of Bitcoin could be liquidated for approximately $3.5 billion today.