This week, the crypto community on social media has once again been buzzing about a bitcoin wallet called ‘Mr 100’ following a significant deposit of 100 bitcoin on April 10, 2024. Despite numerous assertions that the wallet is associated with the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Upbit, a faction continues to believe that it is owned by a minor nation.
While Some Think Bitcoin's 12th-Largest Wallet Hides a Nation State, Onchain Data Shows an Exchange
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Speculation Persists for Bitcoin’s 12th Largest Wallet Despite Early OXT IDs and Arkham’s Mid-March Flag
In recent years, certain cryptocurrency exchange wallets have been incorrectly labeled as mega- whales, despite evidence and indicators suggesting these addresses are tied to trading platforms. This type of misidentification occurred notably during the 2021 Bitcoin bull run with the “1P5ZED” wallet.
Speculation was rife that this wallet belonged to a colossal BTC whale. Nonetheless, analysis of its onchain transactions revealed it was actually an exchange’s wallet, one that hadn’t been publicly acknowledged. The scenario is repeating itself once again with the BTC address “1Ay8v,” which is believed to be controlled by a small nation state.
“The undisclosed nation-state just bought another 100 bitcoin,” one X user told his 50,000 followers sharing an image of the transfer. “They now own 59K bitcoin,” he added. The claim sparked a flurry of responses, with one commenter joking, “It’s going to be funny when we find out that this is just some [12-year-old] from a royal family in Saudi Arabia having fun with his allowance.”
Another popular X user shared the same image and asked his 78,000 followers:
Which nation state has [been] buying 100 bitcoin daily for a year? Because they now hold 59,000 bitcoins.
Yet, all signs tied to the wallet “1Ay8v,” often referred to as ‘Mr 100,’ point to its ownership by a well-recognized cryptocurrency trading platform. In mid-March, Arkham Intelligence pinpointed ‘Mr 100’ as the cold storage wallet of Upbit. This identification stems from the wallet’s direct links to Upbit’s hot wallets and transactions with major exchanges such as Binance.
Moreover, Arkham’s identification isn’t solitary in recognizing it as an Upbit cold wallet; the blockchain explorer OXT also lists it under Upbit’s ownership. On the OXT explorer, there’s a total of three annotations indicating the wallet’s association with the South Korean crypto exchange Upbit.
The ‘Mr 100’ wallet shows extensive transactional activity with the address “35AT3,” which is marked as an Upbit deposit address or hot wallet. Compared to the average personal bitcoin address, ‘Mr 100’ and its connected counterparty addresses display more detailed transaction patterns.
‘Mr. 100’ has transferred a total of 46,935.41 BTC, and, akin to many cold storage wallets, shows a higher number of deposits, with 683 unspent outputs received. Unlike personal, particularly non-custodial wallets, which maintain a higher degree of anonymity and generate fewer transactional traces due to less associated metadata.
Nonetheless, without Upbit officially disclosing ownership, there’s no absolute certainty regarding the wallet’s proprietor, leaving space for speculation and the suggestion that such large wallets could belong to wealthy individuals, often labeled as bitcoin whales.
Do you think ‘Mr. 100’ is a random whale address or do you think it belongs to the South Korean crypto exchange Upbit? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.
