The massive transaction is not the first of its kind, but it is rare, and is definitely one of the largest ever in dollar terms. It was noticed on Twitter and Reddit, where one user traced it back to cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex.
124,946 bitcoin were just moved in a transaction.
That’s ~$1,100,000,000 transfered for an $80 fee.
No government, bank or third party had to verify the transaction, nor could they have stopped it if they wanted to.
The true power of bitcoin. 🔥
— Rhythm (@Rhythmtrader) January 14, 2020
Bitcoin critics from the cryptocurrency world pointed out that you could make a similar transaction even cheaper with other coins, but realistically, not many have a total value big enough to make such a massive transaction feasible.
With this single transaction, the receiving address became the second “richest” Bitcoin address, trailing just one which holds 255,502 BTC.
The transaction happened after a period of fairly quick growth for BTC and other cryptocurrencies. The price of Bitcoin jumped more than 10 percent since Friday, and is currently at $8,714.