The short history of Bitcoin is littered with mysteries and intriguing procedures. This is the case, for example, with addresses that have been dormant for over a decade and are now resurfacing, with BTC fortunes now estimated in the millions of dollars.
From $4,400 to $53.5 million – a Bitcoin address wakes up after 13 years of inactivity
In the world of financial investment, Bitcoin represents an extraordinary adventure. Indeed, its performance defies all known statistics, to the point that the price of BTC has multiplied by more than 10,000 since 2012, when its price was around $10.
Why use 2012 as a reference point? Simply because a Bitcoin address that had been dormant since that time has just resurfaced, with a balance of 479.69 BTC. A wallet whose value was estimated at around $4,400 when it was last active. Today, that represents more than $53.5 million.
Since then, the funds involved had undoubtedly joined the list of millions of BTC considered lost, with estimates ranging from 1.5 to more than 3 million units depending on the logic applied to the calculations.
But the situation is clearly changing, since the price of BTC has exceeded $100,000. Indeed, more and more addresses are waking up to amounts now estimated in the millions of dollars.
$9 million transferred in a few hours
The activity was spotted on September 4 by blockchain monitoring organization Whale Alert. The cause was five successive transfers made within a few hours for a total of $9 million (81.25 BTC), visible on the Arkham Intelligence website.
The operation involved an initial transfer of 0.25 BTC ($28,000), followed by three transfers of approximately 16 BTC ($5.4 million in total) and another of 32.24 BTC ($3.5 million). This was a way of transferring these funds from an old Bitcoin Legacy address (P2pKH) to a more modern SegWit version.
However, these transfers totaling $9 million in BTC represent only a tiny fraction of the funds still held by this address, estimated at 398.4 BTC ($44.3 million) at the time of writing. The destination of these funds—like the identity of the wallet’s owner—remains a mystery for now.
The record in this area remains in the hands of the 80,000 BTC wallet that was reactivated on July 4 after more than 14 years of inactivity. A stockpile of Bitcoin estimated to be worth more than $8.6 billion at the time, which quickly sparked rumors about its origins and the real reason for its reawakening.
