A mysterious Bitcoin transaction and many question marks. Last Friday, an unknown person sent BTC to a wallet address attributed to Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto.

As evidenced by on-chain data, Satoshi's received wallet as much as 27 BTC, the equivalent of more than a million dollars, from the unknown person.

The strange thing is that the sender had apparently bought the coins shortly beforehand on the crypto exchange Binance before sending them directly to the Bitcoin founder.

Either Satoshi woke up, bought 27 bitcoin from Binance, and deposited into their wallet, or someone just burned a million dollars pic.twitter.com/w34kjnAHPJ
— Conor (@jconorgrogan) January 6, 2024

There has been no trace of it for more than a decade Satoshi Nakamoto. His Bitcoin holdings have also never moved since then. Some observers therefore see the action as a (very expensive) hoax or a curious mistake.

To honor him, Bitcoin users continue to send small amounts to the founder. Given that Satoshi has not moved his coins for years, the donation can also be seen as an indirect destruction of the limited Bitcoin supply.

According to data from Chainalysis, approximately 1.5 million BTC lost forever. Either through lost wallet access and private keys or through transactions made to addresses that appear to have been decommissioned. Like the most recent payment to the Bitcoin founder.

However, many people are ruling out the possibility that it was Satoshi himself. Especially since his existing Bitcoin holdings make him a billionaire several times over. 27 BTC more or less should therefore hardly matter to the missing founder.

Many also consider a technical error in the wallet software, as has been repeatedly observed, unlikely. The sender's complex transaction history just before the most recent donation indicates that he was proficient with the blockchain.

The curious incident will likely remain a mystery until the sender makes himself known.