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:
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.