One of Bitcoin’s most celebrated moments, had its lasting mystery finally resolved. The notorious person referred to only as ‘the BearWhale,’ came forward to tell his unexpected story. While refusing to identify himself in many ways, the person in question posted a Bitcoin address and signed message as cryptographic proof that he was in control of at least 36,000 bitcoins in 2013 and 2014. He was initially drawn to bitcoin “after a series of bad experiences with the banking system,” and so he invested “most of life savings” into bitcoin, at a price “around $8.” The BearWhale held onto the huge cache of coins through years of scandals and other bad news and was worth at least $37 million dollars at the end of 2013, the height of the MtGox bubble. He then rode Bitcoin’s price all the way down to $350, losing over two-thirds of his wealth. Then on October 5th, 2014, after months of hearing daily about the scaling debate and agreeing with the need for bigger blocks in Bitcoin, the BearWhale lost faith in Bitcoin and transferred 30,000 coins to Bitstamp, which he trusted to sell them fairly. The following morning, he simply placed a sell limit order for $300 per coin. “I could have gotten a better price if I spent more time working the order I guess,” he told Reddit. “I put up the wall because I didn't want to just sit in front of the computer all day.” There were “no IRS or police visits” after selling them, he revealed, putting an end to conspiracy theories about his motives. “I paid taxes on the gains. I wasn't nervous at all.” Such a large sale was sure to move the market, and he realized at the time that he could have made much more money if he’d spaced out the sale into smaller trades over time. However, he explained that he was panicked about Bitcoin’s block size debate, and his goal was to unload the coins quickly and without a lot of manual intervention. “It worked,” he recalled. “I did not sell in panic. I just believed, incorrectly, in the ‘small blocks are bad’ narrative.” At a market price of around $350 that morning, such a large sale on Bitstamp risked taking prices back to 2010 levels. Incredibly, soon after the “attack” on bitcoin’s price started, the community rallied to buy up all of his coins and maintain the market value. After six whole hours of his constant selling, the price jumped back up. The BearWhale had been “slain” - an event much celebrated in the community ever since.