This article has been amended and split into two sections: The stuff I wrote in 2021, and the addendum written in 2025.

$608,947,469

The Bitcoin wallet with the public address 1LfV1tSt3KNyHpFJnAzrqsLFdeD2EvU1MK is, at the time of writing, worth $586,851,561.62 (USD).

Additionally, in altcoins, the wallet has:

• $5,410,800 in Bitcoin Cash,
• $16,269,000 in Bitcoin SV,
• $416,100.40 in Bitcoin Gold, and
• $7.41 in Clams.

In other words, whoever owns the wallet (ignoring fees)¹ owns a combined total of at least $608,947,469 USD.

There’s a hilarious “black market” of wallet.dat files being sold on the internet for prospective crackers; all of which are most-likely² hex-edited fakes of watch-only addresses that lead to empty wallets.

All the “free robbery” money glitches largely ended once wallets and exchanges prevented people from writing their own easily crackable wallet passphrases, there was even a Defcon talk about some hackers just generating the most common passwords and easily withdrawing buttloads of BTC.

Needless to say, nobody is selling the wallet.dat for 1LfV-1tSt. One place selling the wallet.dat claims to only be aware of 3 people with access to the real wallet, and that it will only sell the wallet to 5 people so that it stays in closed circles. According to the sell page, 1 person has bought the wallet for a whopping 0.84 BTC ($49,544.95).

The wallet owner was supposedly an American OTC trader and holder, so if you’re the fellow who bought the wallet.dat for 49k, you could try English alphanumeric passwords, I guess. Probably better off playing the lottery.

1 in 115 quattuorvigintillion 792 trevigintillion 89 duovigintillion 237 unvigintillion 316 vigintillion 195 novemdecillion 423 octodecillion 570 septendecillion 985 sexdecillion 8 quindecillion 687 quattuordecillion 907 tredecillion 853 duodecillion 269 undecillion 984 decillion 665 nonillion 640 octillion 564 septillion 39 sextillion 457 quintillion 584 quadrillion 7 trillion 913 billion 129 million 639 thousand 936

But don’t worry, there are other routes to gaining access to the wallet’s private key, such as generating & checking all 115 quattuorvigintillion 792 trevigintillion 89 duovigintillion 237 unvigintillion 316 vigintillion 195 novemdecillion 423 octodecillion 570 septendecillion 985 sexdecillion 8 quindecillion 687 quattuordecillion 907 tredecillion 853 duodecillion 269 undecillion 984 decillion 665 nonillion 640 octillion 564 septillion 39 sextillion 457 quintillion 584 quadrillion 7 trillion 913 billion 129 million 639 thousand 936 private keys—At which point you might as well just aim for the major known Bitcoin intermediaries rather than this small fry.

There’s only like ~30 million Bitcoin wallets with non-zero balances right now, so why not try your luck?

Conclusion

Going back to reality, the wallet still receives occasional signals, the source of which is most likely an automated system still hooked up to the wallet; maybe a miner, or maybe just the equivalent of pinging but with money. They come in once or twice every couple months.

The last withdrawal from the wallet was on April 19, 2018. Since then, all movement has been these automated deposits.

Well, that’s all I had to say about the situation. I might update this post if there are any new developments I happen to hear about, but there probably won’t be anything at all.

2025 Amendment

Shortly after I wrote this article, in December of 2022, 10,000 BTC was withdrawn from 1LfV-1tSt3.³

2022 Withdrawal

The December 2022 withdrawal followed this pattern:

Major 10k Withdrawal:

• bc1qz-myne9 received 3,500 BTC
• bc1ql-tj6v7 received 6,500 BTC

Immediate Distribution from bc1qz-myne9:

• 32wdw-6fsxj received 250 BTC
• bc1qp-3zrsv received 3,300 BTC
• Both of these wallets sent their funds down longer chains where BTC evaporated into the ether, but the 3.3k BTC could be traced to the wallet bc1qk62k4lq3lalj3erl8kpguydr6vn9m7p9euxtwg, which currently holds 1634 BTC (the rest was lost in the chain of transations)

Final Status:

• bc1ql-tj6v7 continues to hold 6.5k BTC and gets signals every year like the old wallet.
• bc1qk-62k4 holds 1.6k BTC and was completely dormant from 2023—2024 until a small amount was deposited on the first month of 2025

Minor: Preceding Transactions: There were two small transactions 30 minutes before the major 10k withdrawal:

1. 8:00 AM: -0.0015 BTC to bc1qv8fkqa0uu7jl2ah6eqg2xl2e0pfsy00kc0dacq
2. 8:04 AM: -0.0005 BTC to bc1qv8fkqa0uu7jl2ah6eqg2xl2e0pfsy00kc0dacq
3. 8:38 AM: -10,000 BTC to the two addresses mentioned above

Earlier History

Looking at the wallet’s past, we can see that the source of the 10k BTC was large lump sums in 2014 and 2015 of 10k each.

The 2014 transaction was a zero-satoshi fee transaction of 10k BTC, while the 2015 transaction was a 200k satoshi fee.

2017 Withdrawal

In 2017, the wallet sent 10k BTC to 15cn9aEhSvCmqD5JayCXJLYYUA1MLkhjCf, who sent the 10k along a chain of transactions through fresh wallets who did only two transactions:

1. Forward the BTC to the next fresh wallet in the chain, and
2. Split-off a tiny change amount (50 BTC) and send that to a different wallet.

• The wallets that got these tiny transactions were not made for a single-transaction. Instead, these wallets followed a get-send pattern where they’d get an amount of BTC (usually 50 or 100) and then send that amount out.
  • These send-outs would go through similarly long and complex peeling-chains.

Returning to the primary 10k BTC chain: As the chain progresses, the split-off portion would occasionally change:

• 8500 BTC: Split-off updated to 100 BTC,
• 8000 BTC: Split-off updated to 50 BTC,
• 7400 BTC: Split-off updated to 100 BTC,
• 5300 BTC: Split-off updated to 300 BTC,
• 5200 BTC: Split-off updated to 100 BTC,
• 2000 BTC: Split-off updated to 50 BTC,
• 1000 BTC: Split-off updated to 100 BTC,

The amount went from 300 to 200 to 100 until it eventually went into the same type of wallet the change transactions were going to, finalizing the evaporation.

Technique: Peeling Chain

This transaction pattern—where transactions are chained-together and small amounts of change are peeled-off—is known as the peeling chain or waterfall pattern.

The typical friend-to-friend transaction that you’ll be familiar with looks like—

Alice (ABCD):

• Send: 10,000 BTC
  • To: EFGH: 9,950 BTC
  • To: ABCD: 50 BTC (change)

Bob (EFGH):

• Get: 9,950 BTC
  • From: ABCD: 9950 BTC

—where the change amount just goes back into the wallet you originally sent from. In a peeling chain, the change amount instead goes into a fresh wallet (that you control), which you also chain away.

Peeling chains are good for privacy and obfuscation, as it makes it much harder to figure out the eventual destination and owner of some transactions. Of course, all the information is still on the blockchain, but it is impossible for a complete novice like me to trace anything past the main chain without a lot of extra work.

Additionally, while ownership is obscured, anyone can look at the chain and see certain things—e.g., how all⁴ the change wallets were only active in 2017 for the duration of this 10k movement—and see that somebody didn’t just dissolve 10k BTC into random different owner’s wallets who worked in tandem to delete money; the event can still be tied-together if you’ve got the funding and resources to do it, and there’s the incredibly obvious fact that a massive peeling chain has a way bigger footprint, fees, and operational complexity⁵.

A peeling chain is essentially driving a tank down the interstate. It protects the person inside, but it’s also a tank going down the interstate.

2022 Withdrawal, Summary

The 2022 withdrawal mirrors the 2017 withdrawal once you look at the 3500k BTC that was split-off.

The 6500 BTC, again, is just sitting there in bc1ql7c3k2xw90qmhpntte94mu7mpra6g77nqtj6v7; getting yearly signals like the old 10k wallet.

The 3500 BTC went through a large peeling chain to end up in bc1qk62k4lq3lalj3erl8kpguydr6vn9m7p9euxtwg, which currently has 1634 BTC and hasn’t gotten regular signals.

There isn’t anything to learn here, maybe you gained some knowledge about the peeling chain technique, but I have no grand unifying theory — I just found it fun to watch life-changing sums of money move around and vanish.

Occam’s Razor

Being an early adopter (early enough to pull-off a zero-Sat transaction back when those existed), this wallet belongs to an entity that is:

1. Wealthy

I’m not comfortable making any greater assumptions beyond that.

You could say, “maybe they’re [advanced/smart/knowledgeable/etc]”, but nobody is out there writing their own code to do a peeling chain; this is just a thing big institutions⁶ do.

Maybe if this happened earlier to imply handwritten code it’d be a bit more interesting, but by 2017, everyone had heard of mixers and tumblers even if they couldn’t explain the inner workings.

Either way, for whatever reason, the wallet was split into two. Maybe FTX scared them, maybe they needed more liquid⁷, maybe they realized their wallet.dat was public (the funniest option).

If the latter was true, it would be quite the story to tell; though I don’t have any clue how one would do it. You could send a signal transaction from one or all of the three wallets (old 10k, new 6.5k, or new 1.6k) to verify current ownership, but then just lie (also funny).⁸

Mt. Gox Stolen Funds (Real 2025)

Or maybe it’s long-lost stolen funds from Mt. Gox, as per this phenomenal Reddit post I came across near the tail end of this amendment research. Judging from the user’s post history, they most-likely wrote that message under the influence of meth.

Yeah sure, it’s stolen Mt. Gox funds, I value the word of the retired chemist⁹ who was actually in the game over my novice analysis. Ignore everything I said before this paragraph.