Suddenly waking up after an 11-year nap, a dormant Bitcoin (BTC) wallet that contained over 1,037 Bitcoins—worth $31 million at the time—transferred away its entire holdings.
According to BitInfoCharts, the 1,037 BTC transfer occurred at block height 799701, or about 10:51 am UTC on July 22, during a Bitcoin price of $29,956.
On April 11, 2012, when Bitcoin was only worth $4.92, the long-dormant address acquired the sum of 1,037 BTC, according to information released on July 22 by on-chain analytics company Lookonchain. This indicates that the stash’s value at the time was only about $5,108.
The $31 million was sent to wallet address “bc1qt180…”, which looks to be a brand-new wallet, according to data from blockchain aggregate Blockchair.
According to cryptocurrency price tracker CoinGecko, the initial Bitcoin wallet’s balance peaked at $71.6 million when BTC hit an all-time high of $69,044 on Nov. 10.
Recently, one of the biggest BTC users has been the US government, which on July 12 sent out roughly 10,000 BTC in a sequence of transactions totaling $299 million in connection with the Silk Road seizure.
It’s unclear whether the transactions were forwarded to bitcoin exchanges or if the Justice Department still has possession of them.
Additional enigmatic wallet movements
Another enigmatic Bitcoin whale transferred 1,400 BTC, worth $36 million at the time, to a Pay-to-Taproot account on June 11. The CEO of CryptoQuant, Ki Young Ju, speculates that the goal of this transaction may have been to increase privacy.
Around ten years after purchasing Bitcoin at $663, another Bitcoin address transferred 2,071 BTC, totaling $60 million, earlier in April, according to Lookonchain.
Another Bitcoin account made a huge $250 million transfer of 26,056 BTC three months prior. The wallet had a value of more than $1 billion at the peak of BTC.
At this time, the cost of BTC is $30,082. According to CoinGecko, the price of Bitcoin has climbed by 81.8% in 2023, although it is still down by 56.4% from its record high, which was established in November 2021.
