TL;DR
- A Bitcoin wallet that had remained dormant for 13 years transferred 411.45 BTC, currently worth approximately $34 million, to a new address.
- The funds were acquired in 2013, when Bitcoin was trading near $131 and the entire balance was worth approximately $54,000.
- The transfer was not sent to an exchange, and the BTC remains in the new wallet, which uses a SegWit address format.
A Bitcoin wallet that had not made any transfers for 13 years moved its entire balance of 411.45 BTC to a new address.
According to Arkham Intelligence records, the transaction took place on Sunday and transferred approximately $34 million in Bitcoin, based on a price of around $82,600 per coin.
The original address had received approximately 411 BTC on September 11, 2013, when the cryptocurrency was trading at around $131. At the time, the funds were worth approximately $54,000.
Over the following 13 years, the owner made no purchases, sales, or transfers. The value of the holdings increased more than 600-fold during that period.
New Bitcoin Transfers From Dormant Wallets
The transaction coincided with activity from two other wallets that had also remained dormant for more than a decade. Together, they transferred 417 BTC one day earlier.
The previous week, another address that had recorded no activity since before the pandemic-driven market crash also transferred its funds.
These transactions often fuel speculation about potential sales, although a transfer between wallets does not necessarily mean the bitcoins will be sold.
In the case of the 411.45 BTC, available records show no transfers to exchanges. The new address received a single transaction and has not initiated any outgoing transfers.
The transaction was executed at 18:23 UTC and incurred a fee of just 337 satoshis, less than one cent.
The Funds Were Moved to a SegWit Address
The original wallet used an older address format, while the destination uses SegWit (P2WPKH), a standard that allows more efficient transactions with lower fees.
The address change is consistent with an upgrade to the owner’s custody infrastructure, although it does not, by itself, reveal their intentions.
Arkham’s records also showed that the wallet had received numerous transfers involving tiny amounts of BTC during its years of inactivity.
Some came from addresses identified as being involved in address poisoning, a type of fraud in which attackers send small amounts of cryptocurrency to insert fraudulent addresses into a victim’s transaction history.
The goal is to trick the owner into accidentally copying one of those addresses when making a subsequent transfer.
In this case, the 411.45 BTC reached a new address with no identified links to those fraud attempts. At the time of the analysis, the entire balance remains there, with no further transfers recorded.
