Network Validation: Moving $1 Billion in One Bitcoin Transaction

Last Thursday night, 94,504 bitcoins amounting to $1 billion dollars was moved. This is the largest transaction ever made on a blockchain. Fees amounted to around $700 dollars. This just adds to the validation of blockchain technology, especially bitcoin.

Significance of this Transaction

This transaction seems like a statement since this was not made in multiple transactions. If it wasn’t intended to, it certainly makes one.

Think about what just happened; the network which requires no centralized validator and operates on impartial mathematics and code handily moved this amount of capital; and for a small fee relative to the amount.

I do not know what it takes to move this type of money through the traditional centralized system, but I imagine it would take a lot of time, money, and entities. I do know how to send bitcoin, and many others do as well; and that’s all that’s required to send this amount. You do not have to ask for permission to move your wealth as you like.

Bitcoin Works

Every transaction, great or small, is another transaction of freedom. While a billion-dollar transfer validates the network and draws attention, it is important to remember a transaction of any size is revolutionary.

When you mix in large corporations and governments now trying to introduce centralized cryptocurrencies like Facebook’s Libra, “we are all just keystrokes away from being de-banked, de-platformed and rendered economically unviable.”

With great power, comes great responsibility. Our responsibility is education and educating. Our ability to differentiate between actual permissionless blockchains and permissioned centralized databases that they call a blockchain is essential.

This likely won’t be the last large transfer of bitcoin, but with each one remember how significant every transaction, large or small, is for decentralization and peer-to-peer borderless interactions.