An Ethereum wallet with 61,216 ETH that was pre-mined in 2014 and suddenly came to life
During a period of inactivity, a wallet address containing pre-mined Ethereum worth US$116 million transferred its entire reserve of 61,216 Ether to a site on the Kraken crypto exchange.
The Ethereum environment led a deal event in June 2014, allowing early colleagues and other benefactors to participate and gather pre-mined Ether when the organization couldn’t make tokens alone.
The wallet had a value of about US$20 million during the pre-mine period when Ether was trading at US$300-US$400 per coin. Nevertheless, the tokens have risen to over US$116 million after eight years.
According to Etherscan, the pre-mined 61,216 ETH were sent to a Kraken wallet address on July 18 at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time. Sending US$116 million in Ether needed a US$1.5 exchange fee and a petrol cost of 25.475673161 gwei.
The wallet owner’s identity remains unknown, but it demonstrates the importance of holding — an investment strategy focusing on the long-term accumulation of crypto tokens.
The owner of the 61,216 ETH took a cautious approach to ensure no loss of funds due to human error. Before initiating the whale transaction, they sent a test transaction to the Kraken address with 0.05 ETH.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared some difficulties in implementing a new feature on the blockchain at the Ethereum Community Conference event in Paris on July 18.
According to Buterin, account abstraction extensions, also known as “paymasters,” can enable users to pay their fees “whatever coins they are transferring.”
Buterin also recognized that developers still have to overcome challenges, such as needing an Ethereum Improvement Proposal to upgrade existing Ethereum externally owned accounts normal user accounts into smart contracts and ensuring the protocol works similarly in layer-2 solutions, besides the potential benefits of account abstraction for users.
