One of many oldest wallets on the Bitcoin community has moved over $400 million in BTC after a weird authorized problem by an entity calling itself Salomon Brothers.
Funded with 4,000 BTC on June 27, 2011, when every coin was value simply $17, the pockets had grown from lower than $70,000 to greater than $400 million by the point it obtained this on-chain message.
Particularly, somebody gave a pockets 0.0003 BTC (roughly $30) to publish three OP_RETURN output messages on June thirtieth, July 2nd, and July eighth. Sure varieties of OP_RETURN output are displayed as plain textual content in block explorers comparable to Mempool.area.
These three messages claimed to be authorized notices and directed recipients to go to an online web page.
Billions of {dollars} in “constructive possession”
The webpage options textual content that claims shoppers of the once-great Wall Avenue establishment have “constructive possession” of the pockets, though Protos has not been in a position to affirm its authenticity.
They declare the pockets has been deserted, present a 90-day discover interval, and make numerous different calls for.
If the October tenth deadline was certainly an actual deadline, it might have handed earlier than the pockets moved 4,000 BTC on October twenty third.
Constructive possession is a authorized time period that refers to “the appropriate to acquire bodily management of the property and/or numerous rights to the bodily management of one other individual.”
After all, it’s unclear whether or not this notification constitutes authorized data provision.
Learn extra: 80,000 BTC Mt Gox pockets attacked through OP_RETURN message
The group that revealed the OP_RETURN message despatched BTC seizure notices to over 39,000 dormant wallets, together with one pockets that held over $8 billion.
To this point, no US court docket has dominated on the power to repossess outdated BTC. Simply broadcast a message to your outdated pockets.
Don’t go to suspicious Salomon Brothers web sites
Regardless of repeated makes an attempt to contact Salomon Brothers executives, Protoss has been unable to verify whether or not these actions had been truly the work of Salomon Brothers or another person searching for to capitalize on the model.
Salomon Brothers was as soon as rebranded to Salomon Encore, modified executives, and migrated its web site a number of occasions through the years.
Moreover, this web site has beforehand contained fundamental grammatical errors and purple flags of a phishing marketing campaign.
Bitcoin historians BitMEX Analysis had been additionally unconvinced that the web site was managed by the actual Salomon Brothers firm.
As with all suspicious net hyperlinks, Protoss doesn’t suggest viewing or visiting unsolicited net pages. Person data obtained from the web site could also be used for phishing, social engineering, or bodily threats.
Learn extra: ‘Solomon Brothers’ are again — in a $279 billion Bitcoin dusting scheme
In any case, the motion of enormous quantities of 14-year-old BTC, particularly those who had been the goal of doubtful on-chain recapture makes an attempt, has aroused the curiosity of Bitcoin historians.
As trendy courts and customers of the Bitcoin community attempt to perceive who controls among the largest Bitcoin wallets, the 2025 Salomon Brothers branded OP_RETURN case is definitely an attention-grabbing case research.
