A wallet with 900 million euros in bitcoins was emptied

As the price of the most famous cryptocurrency returns to rise, the most famous treasure trove moves from one digital safe to another, fueling speculation

photo: pixabay . In the week that is drawing to a close, the apparent quiet of the mother of all cryptocurrencies, which for some time seemed to have found its stability, has been interrupted by two events.

A sudden surge

The first, which is generating a certain frenzy in the markets is the unexpected and large rise in bitcoin. The prices in a week went from 9,000 to 13,000 euros, with an increase of 6.5% in the last 24 hours alone. To understand, do you remember when in December 2017 bitcoin had its boom reaching 17 thousand euros and then began a slow decline? Well, today's price is the highest since January 2018, when the bubble began to deflate. According to analysts, this Back to the Future effect would herald another run-up to the top. Although there are few certainties with bitcoins, the optimism is palpable. As the Cointelegraph website wrote "once again, Fomo has taken over the markets" (Fomo stands for "Fear of missing out", literally: fear of being cut off).

The reasons for this leap upwards are to be found in the vitality of the cryptocurrency markets in recent months. The number of large institutional investors who once snubbed bitcoins is constantly growing: according to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, institutional interest has risen by more than 20% in recent months. A further push upwards comes from the endorsement of Paypal, which a few days ago announced that it also wanted to offer its users the ability to manage cryptocurrencies, after its top management had opposed any contamination in the past.

But there are also macro-economic reasons behind this upward trend, according to Investing.com: the negative impact of the pandemic on the global economy is driving regulators and governments to consider further measures of monetary stimulus, which in the long term should have an effect on those assets, such as bitcoin and gold, considered the best protection against inflation risks. In short, the more money is printed, the greater the chances of bitcoin to update new highs.

The emptied wallet

The second event instead concerns the sphere of crypto-mysteries: last Tuesday was emptied a bitcoin wallet that contained 69,369 bitcoins, i.e. more than 900 million euros (you read that right, millions). This is the infamous wallet 1HQ3Go3ggs8pFnXuHVHRytPCq5fGG8Hbhx, the Eldorado of many hackers who over the years have tried to violate it, since it had been dormant since 2015, suggesting that its owner could also have evaporated.

Then, suddenly , something happened the other day: the funds were moved to another wallet. And, given the sums under discussion, hypotheses and inferences have begun to make the rounds of the network. Some have talked about the biggest robbery of the century. While others lean towards a rentreè of its owner who, noticing the attempts of hackers from all over the world to rob him, in the end simply decided to change the coordinates of his treasure. Who knows if all this has something to do with the recent surge in bitcoin prices: if such a wallet decides to empty it would be a big problem for the markets.