President’s Day Shocker: $400 Million Bitcoin Buy

Not even a holiday slows us down out here, and we’re keeping an eye on all the latest news to see what’s going on in mobile payments, cryptocurrency and beyond. While many of the exchanges slept for President’s Day, we caught sight of one major new development in the field: a $400 million bitcoin purchase from an anonymous source.

Interestingly, the actual purchase took place well before President’s Day, and represented a three-day buying binge that started on February 9 and ran clear to February 12. In the end, the trader walked away with just over 96,000 bitcoin, which was nearly double what said trader could have landed just a few weeks back.

Some are wondering if this monster investment suggests that indeed a bitcoin bottom may have been found. Social media circuits seemed to consider the big buy a good sign, and 360 Blockchain USA president Jeff Koyen noted that he was “…willing to believe that, seeing bitcoin bottom around $6,000, Wall Street smelled blood and jumped back in.” Given that, as of this writing, bitcoin was sitting at $11,380, that may not be a supposition out of line.

With regulatory fury beginning to retract—South Korea has announced that it wouldn’t ban cryptocurrency exchanges after all—this could be the start of a real recovery. There are more than a few prognosticators in the field suggesting bitcoin could go to $30,000 or higher even by the end of this year, so if that actually happens, that $400 million buy could turn into $12 billion. And that’s assuming that $30,000 is the high point, not just a stop to higher things.

It’s easy to forget that bitcoin is a finite property. There will only be around 21 million bitcoin ever produced, and that doesn’t count the original genesis block or the various bitcoins that have been lost over the years. That scarcity may well mean a kind of value, if nothing else, and that means picking some up now could be a winner in days to come. Whether this event goes down in history as a nine-figure boondoggle or a money-maker par excellence remains to be seen.