Dormant address containing $6.8 million in bitcoin wakes up after more than 12 years

A dormant Bitcoin wallet address containing 119 BTC -4.66% ($6.8 million) transferred funds for the first time in more than 12 years on Thursday morning, according to onchain data.

An initial send of around 76 BTC ($4.4 million) was made at 7:11 a.m. UTC, data from blockchain explorer Mempool shows.

The remaining 43 BTC ($2.5 million) were sent from the address at 8:55 a.m. UTC, though the transaction remains unconfirmed at the time of writing.

The address last sent 2.98 BTC ($15 at the time) on Feb. 28, 2012, when the 119 BTC balance was worth just $600, on-chain monitoring platform Whale Alert noted on X. 

The reason for the transfer remains unknown, as does the identity of the wallet's ownership. However, onchain data indicates the owner is reconsolidating the 119 BTC at a single new address , and given the same transfer amounts and proximity of the transactions, there is a reasonable likelihood that the bitcoin still belongs to the same entity.

Bitcoin is currently trading for around $57,242, according to The Block’s bitcoin price page , meaning that the value of the bitcoin the address transferred has risen more than 11,000 times since the funds were last moved in 2012.

Recent bitcoin whale movements

On May 12, 1,000 BTC worth over $60 million was moved for the first time in a decade. That followed a send of 687.33 BTC — worth over $44 million — that was also moved for the first time in 10 years, just a week earlier.

In March, the fifth richest address on the Bitcoin blockchain, which had been dormant since 2019, moved $6 billion. Another entity also combined $140 million in bitcoin mined in 2010 into a single wallet during the same month.

In January, nearly 50,000 dormant bitcoin woke up less than a week after spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds were approved in the United States.