TL;DR:
- A Bitcoin wallet inactive since 2011 moved 49.97 BTC valued at approximately $3.2 million on August 6, 2026.
- The funds were sent to an address with a history of transfers to deposits at institutional broker FalconX, according to Arkham data.
- The operation was executed days after a flaw in Coldcard was revealed that allowed the theft of $114 million from vulnerable wallets.
A wallet of Bitcoin that remained inactive for more than fifteen years registered activity yesterday, transferring 49.97 BTC —equivalent to around $3.2 million— to an address with ties to institutional broker FalconX. The original wallet had received those coins on July 16, 2011, when Bitcoin was trading near $10, and had not moved them since, according to Galaxy Research.
The transaction was included in block 961331 at 20:14 UTC. The operation combined four inputs from the wallet with two smaller inputs from other addresses. The result was the exact transfer of 50 BTC to a SegWit address —a more efficient and economical format than previous ones—, while a second output received approximately 0.00116 BTC as fees.
🌚 Awakened — dormant 14+ years
49.97 BTC ($3.23M) untouched since first received 2011-07-16 (15.0y ago) — just moved in block 961331Address: 1EBzWeno4frVz5hKp3LvVRpN84cpfJzYjL
No attribution💰 Realized PnL: +$3.23M (+634,347% gain) – basis ~$10 avg – held 15.0y
🕐 2026-08-06…— Galaxy Research (@glxyresearch) August 6, 2026
Tracking the Bitcoins
The receiving address of the Bitcoin is not new. Arkham records show that the same address previously sent 6.336 BTC and 16.131 BTC to deposits identified as belonging to FalconX, in addition to having received funds from wallets labeled as a hot wallet of Nexo and Prime Trust custody. As of Friday’s close, the 50 BTC remained at that address with no on-chain evidence that they had been transferred to any exchange or sold.
The sudden awakening of old wallets tends to generate attention because their owners accumulated coins when Bitcoin was worth a fraction of its current price. However, a transfer on its own does not allow one to determine whether the holder plans to sell, reorganize their custody, or simply update the format of their storage.
Coldcard Shook the Market
The community is concerned about the security of cold storage. Coinkite, manufacturer of the Coldcard hardware wallet, warned its users about a flaw in a firmware released in 2021 that could expose the keys generated by the affected devices.
According to the company, attackers stole up to $114 million from vulnerable wallets in four waves of thefts that occurred since July 30. There is no link between the 2011 wallet and the Coldcard issue, but the disclosure of that vulnerability led many long-term holders to review their storage configurations to protect their Bitcoins, which could explain part of the recent activity in historically inactive addresses.
