Metaplanet has paid over $45 million to operate a bitcoin (BTC) treasury company that has a $1 billion unrealized loss from investing in BTC.

The Japanese company that emulated Michael Saylor’s Strategy loaded its purchases far higher than Strategy’s $75,385 cost basis. It paid 36% more, to be precise.

Indeed, Metaplanet has paid $4.41 billion to buy 43,000 BTC at an average cost basis of $102,502 per coin.

Strive, a publicly traded asset manager and Bitcoin treasury company, added 1,800 Bitcoin to its holdings last week, accelerating an accumulation strategy that has propelled it into the ranks of the world’s five biggest publicly traded corporate Bitcoin holders.

The company purchased the Bitcoin (BTC) for approximately $143 million between Aug. 24 and Aug. 28, paying an average price of $79,431 per BTC, including fees and expenses. CEO Matt Cole confirmed the acquisition on Monday.

The purchase brought Strive’s total holdings to 23,156 Bitcoin, up from 21,356 BTC a week earlier. As Cointelegraph reported, the company had purchased 1,110 BTC the previous week for roughly $81.5 million at an average price of $73,409 per coin.

Strive has accelerated its Bitcoin accumulation in recent weeks. Adam Livingston, an adviser to Saturn Credit, noted that the latest purchase increased the company’s Bitcoin holdings by roughly 8.4% in just five business days.

Source: Adam Livingston

The acquisition also pushed Strive past Bullish, the crypto exchange and digital asset infrastructure company, to become the fifth-largest publicly traded corporate holder of Bitcoin, according to industry data.

Corporate Bitcoin buying returns as price rebounds

Strive’s latest purchases have coincided with a broad recovery in Bitcoin and the wider digital asset market that began on Aug. 19, when the US Treasury Department announced plans to double the size of certain long-term bond buybacks. The move helped push Treasury yields lower and fueled a rebound in risk assets, with Bitcoin rallying more than 23% to a recent high above $81,000.

Strive isn’t alone in ramping up its Bitcoin purchases. Michael Saylor’s Strategy, the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin holder, announced Monday that it had resumed buying BTC for the first time since June, acquiring 4,603 Bitcoin at an average price of $80,318.

The purchase lifted Strategy’s holdings back above 845,000 BTC following four Bitcoin sales since May.

Related: Crypto Biz: Bitcoin pumps, Wall Street does the paperwork

In March, an almost-dead Bitcoin wallet suddenly resurfaced and moved about $1 million worth of BTC through a large centralized custodian—only for nearly the same amount to be sent back three weeks later. Less than two months after that brief “round trip,” the same stash was intentionally destroyed by sending it to an unspendable address.

The episode sits within a broader puzzle highlighted by blockchain researchers: multiple BTC-burning transactions in May, totaling 107 BTC (worth roughly $8.5 million at the time). New wallet-cluster analysis suggests the burn-related addresses were likely controlled by the same individual, raising the question of why someone would deliberately destroy coins that represent long-held value.

Key takeaways

• One dormant wallet moved 20.00010537 BTC through an unidentified major custodian and then received 20.00006037 BTC back about three weeks later—an outcome difficult to square with typical trading.
• Five separate wallets later burned their BTC, and Chainalysis reported “strong indicators of common ownership” linking them.
• Most of the funds behind the burn can be traced back to Mt. Gox-era origins, suggesting an early adopter connection.
• Researchers cannot confirm why the coins were destroyed; even CoinShares-class level of onchain forensics can’t determine intent from transaction history alone.
• A possible clue emerges from repeated transfers clustered around similar dollar values (about $10,400), hinting at a planned approach—but not fully explaining the March round trip.

A dormant wallet returns—and immediately interacts with a custodian

Blockchain educator Bennet described a wallet that lay dormant for nearly 12 years before suddenly moving 20.00010537 BTC to “a custodian of some kind,” according to his analysis. Three weeks later, almost the entire balance returned, minus only a very small difference (about $3). Bennet characterized the pattern this way: the full balance went out to what appeared to be an exchange hot wallet and nearly the same amount came back three weeks later; then, seven weeks after the return, the funds were burned.

What makes the sequence notable is its symmetry. Burning is irreversible on-chain, but the “round trip” suggests the private keys behind the dormant wallet were actively used—not merely to let funds sit, but to interact with custodial infrastructure, retrieve the coins, and then choose a terminal outcome.

Bennet’s observation aligns with a timing link to a wider narrative of BTC destruction. Earlier coverage connected the broader mystery to 107 BTC burned in May, described as worth approximately $8.5 million at the time. The March event may be part of the same story, even though the chain of custody is obscured once the coins enter custodian systems.

Chainalysis: the burn wallets point to one controller

Chainalysis analysis, as summarized by Bennet and repeated in the coverage, indicates that five wallets ultimately responsible for destroying BTC show “strong indicators of common ownership.” In other words, the on-chain behavior suggests the same party controlled these addresses at some point.

The wallets were reportedly funded on the same day in April 2014. From there, each address sent BTC to the same deposit address at a large centralized exchange. Researchers also noted a rotational pattern: one address would transmit BTC to the exchange until its activity paused, then another would take over with transactions of similar cadence and dollar-equivalent value.

Chainalysis further reported that most of the funds could be traced back to Mt. Gox, implying an early Bitcoin holder background. While the connection suggests origin, it does not prove the coins were withdrawn directly from Mt. Gox at the time it ceased trading in February 2014—because the five wallets were funded in April. Bennet argued it’s plausible the owner was among those who managed to get their coins out before the collapse.

Equally important: the custodian remains unidentified. Chainalysis confirmed it is a large centralized exchange, but it does not publicly disclose the names of the services it identifies. Bennet’s interpretation is that the deposit address behaves like a static customer address within a custodian—one that doesn’t maintain a meaningful balance itself because deposits are swept and consolidated internally using an omnibus wallet approach. That design makes the coins’ subsequent fate hard to follow on the public blockchain.

The “$10,400” pattern—and why it may still be incomplete

One of the wallets involved in the burn later sent 19.6 BTC in 60 separate transactions to the same custodian between 2022 and 2024, according to the mempool-linked reference in the reporting. The BTC amounts varied widely—from roughly 0.15 BTC to 0.62 BTC—but when translated into dollars at the time of each transfer, the transactions were strikingly consistent.

Specifically, 58 of the 60 transfers were within 10% of approximately $10,400 per transaction. That implies the controller cared more about dollar totals than fixed BTC amounts. Bennet suggested the behavior could reflect a planned liquidation strategy.

However, the pattern has limits. The blockchain cannot prove whether those dollars were realized through a sale, held, or moved onward, because once funds hit a custodian they are mixed with many other inputs and consolidated internally. Researchers also noted that while the payment size was broadly constant, transaction frequency was not; transfers arrived in clusters rather than a perfectly regular automation schedule. Bennet viewed that as more consistent with sending a fixed-dollar amount when conditions required it, rather than a purely automated periodic process.

Still, even if the “$10,400” behavior hints at strategy, it doesn’t close the gap around the March event—particularly the fact that the wallet sent almost exactly the same amount out and got almost the same amount back shortly afterward.

The $1 million “round trip” doesn’t fit a simple trading explanation

After remaining untouched for roughly 12 years, the dormant wallet moved its entire balance of 20.00010537 BTC and received 20.00006037 BTC back—leaving a tiny difference of about 4,500 satoshis (around $3). The returned Bitcoin was split into three transactions of 7 BTC, 7 BTC, and 6.00006037 BTC, sent over three consecutive days.

Bennet argued that the use of round numbers may align with custodial withdrawal limits. More importantly, the coins did not just reappear somewhere else—they returned to the same address that had sent them to the custodian.

The transaction history also suggests the same private key holder controlled the wallet before and after the round trip. Bennet noted that using the BTC in March would have required the private key to authorize the custodian movement, and burning it in May required the key again. That shared key linkage makes the sequence particularly difficult to interpret as a straightforward exchange workflow where funds simply change hands.

The central tension is clear: if the activity were primarily about trading or liquidation, the near-identical “go out, come back” outcome appears unusually tight, especially given the custodial mixing that otherwise obscures on-chain details.

So what was the point of a deliberate burn?

Multiple explanations have been floated, but the available evidence doesn’t neatly select one. The liquidation theory helps rationalize earlier patterns—especially the “$10,400” clustering and the apparent rotational funding to the same custodian—but it does not readily explain why the controller would send roughly $1 million through the same infrastructure in March and then retrieve virtually all of it.

One alternative possibility is that the controller was testing an old custody setup or wallet—verifying that after a long dormancy, coins could still be moved through a major custodian and returned successfully. Yet that still leaves the subsequent decision to destroy the BTC.

Tax or compliance narratives could also be imaginable: someone might reorganize assets through recognized custody channels for record-keeping. But the reporting notes there is no evidence tying these actions to any specific regulatory or tax event.

Privacy is another candidate. Sending BTC through a custodian that sweeps deposits into an omnibus wallet can make on-chain tracing more difficult after the point of deposit. Still, privacy alone doesn’t clarify why the coins later ended up burned rather than merely secured.

Bennet also suggested a more personal motive: someone without heirs might have chosen to permanently reduce Bitcoin’s circulating supply by burning rather than destroying private keys. He also emphasized that this hypothesis is not provable purely via blockchain analysis.

Chainalysis, as cited in the coverage, effectively summed up the current limitation: it does not have a clear explanation for why the owner would move a long-dormant stash through a custodian, retrieve roughly the same amount, and then burn it deliberately.

In other words, the blockchain records the “what” with unusual clarity, but not the “why.”

The next thing to watch is whether more tracing work identifies the custodian involved in the March round trip and in the May burn-linked transfers, or whether additional wallet-cluster research finds consistent behavioral links across other dormant-to-active Bitcoin movements. Without that, the most important unknown remains intent—and intent is the one variable onchain forensics can’t conclusively measure.

XRP price traded near $1.36 on Aug. 31 after falling roughly 7% over seven days, as fading momentum and leveraged position unwinding offset record weekly demand from U.S. spot exchange-traded funds.

XRP price pulls back 7% after August rally

According to data from crypto.news, XRP (XRP) price was trading around $1.36 on Aug. 31 at the time of writing. The token had declined from approximately $1.48 over the previous seven days, leaving it down about 7% for the period.

The pullback followed a rapid recovery from an August low near $0.98. XRP gained more than 30% during the month and briefly reached $1.70 on Aug. 22 before sellers rejected the move. Price then formed a series of lower highs below $1.55, $1.50, and $1.45.

XRP’s 4-hour chart shows that the latest decline brought the token back toward a support area that formed during the initial breakout. The Supertrend indicator remained bullish at $1.341, placing its active support slightly below the market price.

However, the Awesome Oscillator registered a negative reading of -0.0364. Its histogram also stayed below zero, indicating that short-term bearish momentum had not fully cleared despite XRP’s attempt to stabilize above $1.35.

The combination leaves XRP at a decision point. Holding $1.34–$1.35 would preserve the higher trading range created by the August rally, while a confirmed 4-hour close below it could weaken the remaining bullish structure.

ETF inflows counter XRP derivatives reset

U.S. spot XRP ETFs recorded $110.49 million in net inflows during the week ending Aug. 28, according to data from SoSoValue. It was their strongest weekly result of 2026.

The funds held about $1.44 billion in net assets after the inflows, while cumulative net inflows reached approximately $1.66 billion. The demand created a contrast between institutional fund flows and XRP’s falling market price.

Derivatives traders took a more defensive position. Aggregate XRP futures open interest had climbed to approximately $2.73 billion earlier in August, its highest level since October, as leveraged traders positioned for a larger move.

Price and open interest later declined together as XRP retreated from the $1.48–$1.50 resistance zone. Such a combination generally points to traders closing existing positions rather than building an aggressive new short position, although open-interest changes alone cannot identify every trader’s direction.

The reset reduced some of the leverage accumulated during the rally. It did not, however, produce enough spot buying to return XRP above $1.40 before the end of the month.

XRP liquidation map identifies the next price magnets

The one-week CoinGlass liquidation heatmap places the largest nearby liquidity concentrations around $1.35 and $1.38. XRP tested both areas during the Aug. 31 decline and was trading between them when the chart was captured.

A concentrated band around $1.35 could attract further price movement if sellers retest the weekly low. Losing that level would place the next visible liquidity pockets near $1.33 and $1.30.

Liquidity also remains stacked above the market. The first meaningful overhead cluster appears near $1.40–$1.42, followed by a broader concentration between $1.44 and $1.45. Larger liquidation bands extend toward $1.48–$1.50.

Those zones could accelerate a rebound if XRP moves higher and forces leveraged short positions to close. They can also act as resistance because traders may use the same levels to exit positions.

The daily chart provides a more constructive signal. Chaikin Money Flow stood at 0.09, keeping the indicator above zero and pointing to net buying pressure over its 20-day measurement period. The positive reading suggests capital has not fully left the market despite the weekly price decline.

XRP nevertheless remained close to the daily Murrey Math pivot near $1.40. A daily recovery above that level would open a path toward $1.50 and the chart’s $1.60 resistance. Failure to reclaim it would leave the token exposed to another test of the lower trading range.

XRP support at $1.28 becomes the main downside test

Chart analyst ChartNerd said XRP had failed to reclaim its 50-week exponential moving average for a second consecutive week. The analyst placed that average near $1.53 and identified the 20-week EMA around $1.27 as the next short-term support floor.

The weekly rejection adds weight to the $1.48–$1.53 resistance range. A break above the zone would invalidate the present series of lower highs and allow buyers to target $1.60, followed by the August wick near $1.70.

On the downside, the 4-hour Supertrend at $1.341 offers the first line of support. A decisive break could send XRP toward $1.30 and the weekly 20 EMA near $1.27–$1.28. The bullish August recovery would become more vulnerable if the price closes below that moving average.

Ripple’s scheduled escrow release adds another short-term consideration. The company’s monthly system is set to unlock 1 billion XRP on Sept. 1, although Ripple has historically returned a large share of the released tokens to escrow. The scheduled release does not mean the full amount will enter the open market at once.

CLARITY Act vote adds a US policy catalyst

The U.S. Senate is expected to hold a procedural vote on the CLARITY Act on Sept. 15. The vote would test whether supporters can secure the 60 votes required to advance the market-structure legislation.

The vote is not final passage, and no signed law is scheduled for Sept. 15. Its outcome could still affect sentiment toward U.S.-traded digital assets because the proposal seeks to clarify federal oversight of crypto markets.

For XRP, the immediate technical range remains more important. Buyers must protect $1.34–$1.35 and reclaim $1.40 to shift short-term momentum. Losing the lower boundary would increase the risk of a deeper correction toward $1.28, while a move above $1.50 would put the August recovery back in control.

In March, someone moved $1 million worth of Bitcoin through a large crypto custodian. Three weeks later, almost exactly the same amount came back. Incredibly, less than two months after that, the Bitcoin was deliberately destroyed.

The wallet had been dormant for almost 12 years before it suddenly sprang back to life. Bitcoin educator Bennet noted it sent 20.00010537 BTC to “a custodian of some kind” before receiving it back again (minus $3 or so).

“The whole balance went out to what looks like an exchange hot wallet, and almost exactly the same amount came back three weeks later. Seven weeks after that, it was burned.”

The mystery BTC transaction is part of a wider enigma surrounding 107 BTC burned in May, worth roughly $8.5 million at the time.

New blockchain analysis shows that five wallets that ultimately destroyed their Bitcoin appear to have been controlled by the same person. It was likely an early Bitcoin holder who had funds on the collapsed Mt. Gox exchange.

But why on earth would anyone deliberately destroy millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin?

The BTC wallets behind the burn

The five addresses that eventually sent their Bitcoin to an unspendable address show “strong indicators of common ownership” according to Chainalysis.

How to destroy Bitcoin. Source: Bennet.org

All five wallets were initially funded on the same day in April 2014, and each subsequently sent almost the same dollar-equivalent amount of BTC to the same deposit address at a large centralized exchange.

Related: Bitcoin faces true demand test above $83K as liquidity thickens: Glassnode

The addresses also seem to have operated on a rotational basis: one would send Bitcoin to the exchange until its activity stopped, then another would take over with transactions of a “similar cadence and value.”

Most of the funds, Chainalysis says, can be traced back to Mt. Gox, “suggesting the owner was an early adopter of Bitcoin.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean the coins were withdrawn directly from Mt. Gox, since the exchange ceased trading in February 2014, and the five wallets were funded in April. Bennet says:

“It’s entirely possible that the owner of these coins was one of the lucky ones who managed to get their coins off the exchange before it collapsed.”

The custodian itself remains unidentified. Chainalysis confirms it’s a large centralized exchange but says it does not publicly disclose the names of services it identifies.

Bennet’s analysis suggests the address behaves like a static customer deposit address at a large custodian.

That’s because the address doesn’t maintain a balance, and the deposits are swept into transactions containing dozens of other inputs before being consolidated into an omnibus wallet.

Once the Bitcoin enters the custodian’s system, the public blockchain can no longer tell us what happened to those coins. And that makes the wallet’s earlier activity even more intriguing.

The $10,400 clue

One of the five addresses sent 19.6 BTC in 60 transactions to the custodian between 2022 and 2024.

The Bitcoin amounts were vastly different, ranging from about 0.15 BTC to 0.62 BTC. But when measured in dollars, the transactions reveal extraordinary similarities.

This address sent 19.6 BTC in 60 transactions to the same custodian. Source: Mempool.space

Despite Bitcoin’s price more than quadrupling during the period, 58 of the 60 transfers were within 10% of approximately $10,400 when they were sent.

So, while the owner wasn’t repeatedly sending the same amount of BTC, they were repeatedly sending almost the same dollar amount. Bennet says:

“This suggests to me a planned liquidation strategy.”

There is no way to prove this theory from the blockchain, since the BTC was mixed with large numbers of other coins once it reached the custodian, and the data doesn’t show whether the Bitcoin was sold, held or transferred elsewhere.

Related: Bitget CEO isn’t buying the Bitcoin rally — She’s waiting for $50K

Interestingly, “while payment size was constant,” Bennet says, “frequency was not — these $10k transfers came in clusters,” which could be more consistent with someone sending fixed-dollar amounts when required rather than following an automated schedule.

The $1 million round trip

While the $10,400 transactions offer a possible explanation for the wallet owner’s earlier relationship with the custodian, they do not help explain the $1 million round trip that happened in March.

After sitting untouched for roughly 12 years, the wallet suddenly moved its entire balance of 20.00010537 BTC and received 20.00006037 BTC back, a difference of just 4,500 satoshis, or around $3.

That weighs against the idea that the owner was simply trading the Bitcoin, since whatever happened inside the custodian, almost exactly the same amount came back.

This address sent 20 BTC and received 20 BTC back. Source: Mempool.space

The returned Bitcoin was also split into three transactions of 7 BTC, 7 BTC and 6.00006037 BTC, sent over three consecutive days.

Bennet says the round numbers are consistent with a daily withdrawal limit imposed by the custodian. Crucially, the Bitcoin didn’t simply end up in another wallet; it returned to the same address that had sent it.

The transaction history also indicates that the same key holder controlled the coins before and after the round trip, Bennet says: spending the Bitcoin in March required the private key, while burning it in May required the same key again.

That makes the sequence particularly difficult to explain as a conventional exchange transaction.

So why did they do it?

There are several possibilities, but none fits all of the evidence. The liquidation theory makes some sense of the earlier transactions, but it doesn’t explain why the owner would send roughly $1 million through the same infrastructure in March and then retrieve virtually all of it.

Perhaps the owner was testing an old wallet or custody arrangement after 12 years of dormancy, moving the coins through a major custodian and successfully getting them back to show that an old key and custody setup still worked. But then, why destroy the Bitcoin afterward?

Tax or compliance reasons could potentially explain why someone moved an old stash through a major custodian, but then, there is no evidence linking the transaction to a particular tax or regulatory event.

There is also a privacy explanation. Sending Bitcoin through a custodian that sweeps deposits into an omnibus wallet makes the subsequent movement of those coins much harder to follow onchain. That’s certainly plausible but still provides no clues as to their ultimate destruction.

Perhaps the Bitcoin burn itself was intended as some kind of statement. Yet beyond a few blockchain sleuths, the action almost went unnoticed.

Burning Bitcoin is irreversible, so whoever controls the private keys chose to send the coins somewhere they can never be spent again, rather than simply leaving them untouched. Bennet says:

“There’s also the possibility that a very wealthy individual without heirs decided to permanently burn their coins (thereby publicly reducing the total bitcoin supply), rather than just destroying their keys.”

For now, even the firms best placed to analyze the blockchain are at a loss. Chainalysis concedes:

“We don’t have a clear explanation for why the owner would move a long-dormant stash through a custodian, retrieve roughly the same amount, and then deliberately burn it.”

While the blockchain can give us an unusually detailed record of what happened, it can’t tell us why. For now, at least, that remains the million-dollar question.

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