A Bitcoin wallet that had kept 4,581.94 BTC untouched since March 2020 has transferred its entire balance to five newly created addresses, moving coins worth about $377 million in one transaction. The transfer took place on Oct. 12, while Bitcoin was trading near $82,350, according to blockchain data cited by Decrypt.
Six years of dormancy ends
The transaction was confirmed in Bitcoin block 971,126 at approximately 18:37 UTC. Four of the receiving addresses each received 1,000 BTC, while the fifth received the remaining 581.94 BTC. None of those addresses had spent any of the coins by block 971,279 on Oct. 13.
The transfer cost only 732 satoshis, or sats. A satoshi is the smallest unit of Bitcoin, equal to one hundred-millionth of a coin. At the time, the fee was worth roughly 60 cents.
The identity of the wallet’s owner and the purpose of the transfer remain unknown. Moving coins between fresh addresses can serve several purposes, including reorganizing holdings, improving privacy or changing custody arrangements. A transfer alone does not establish that the Bitcoin is being sold.
The coins originally arrived on March 3, 2020. That transaction divided a 5,081.95 BTC balance among three destinations: 4,581.95 BTC went to the wallet in question, while 250 BTC was sent to each of two other addresses. With Bitcoin trading at roughly $8,830 at the time, the wallet’s holdings were worth about $40.5 million.
The current value represents nearly a tenfold increase from the coins’ estimated value when they arrived. The original address retained only 23,288 sats—about $19—as of Oct. 13, while the five new addresses held the full 4,581.94 BTC.
Holdings survived major market shocks
The wallet remained inactive through a series of sharp Bitcoin and broader-market declines. Shortly after it was funded, the COVID-19 crisis pushed the value of the holdings from approximately $40.5 million to about $17.6 million.
The balance later rose to an estimated $291 million peak in April 2021. In May of that year, Tesla suspended Bitcoin payments and China intensified its crackdown on cryptocurrency mining. The wallet’s value subsequently fell to around $131 million by June.
The 2022 failures of Terra, Celsius and FTX, together with interest-rate increases by the Federal Reserve, brought another major decline. At the market low, the holdings were valued at about $71 million—approximately $239 million below their estimated value at the November 2021 peak. Over the same period, the S&P 500 fell about 25% and Bitcoin reached a two-year low.
A later tariff-related market shock also affected the wallet. Bitcoin fell from a record $124,728 to $57,735, a 54% decline, before recovering. The value of the holdings dropped from roughly $571.5 million to about $265 million during that period. Despite those swings, retaining the coins since March 2020 produced almost ten times the original value on a net basis, based on the figures in the blockchain analysis.
Dust deposits and a possible poisoning attempt
The address also received 22 small “dust” deposits between August 2020 and May 2026. These transfers ranged from 546 sats to 6,953 sats, each worth less than $6 at current prices. Sixteen arrived through batch transactions that distributed funds to between 87 and 610 addresses at once.
One 600-sat payment showed characteristics associated with address poisoning. In this technique, an attacker creates an address that resembles a target address at the beginning and end, hoping the target later copies the wrong address from its transaction history.
On Jan. 28, 2025, an address beginning with 18VpNbPc and ending with pQ9x sent 600 sats to the wallet. It shared the wallet’s first three and last four characters. The look-alike address had been funded in a Nov. 12, 2024 transaction that sent money to 1,401 outputs and was emptied after making the single payment. The original wallet did not send funds to it.
Current market picture
Moneyiar market data at 20:39 on Oct. 13, 2026, puts Bitcoin at $83,172.890940729, up 0.23% over 24 hours but down 2.89% over seven days. JUST was $0.1380221092, down 0.69% in 24 hours and 2.24% over seven days. Ailey stood at $0.2679773861, down 0.03% and 0.63% over the same periods.
AI Rig Complex was $0.035091056 at 07:53 on Oct. 13, down 43.36% over 24 hours and 50.2% over seven days.
Large Bitcoin holders, commonly called whales, can move funds for many reasons, and traders sometimes interpret dormant-wallet activity as a possible precursor to selling. In this case, however, the five receiving addresses had not spent the coins by the latest block cited, leaving the destination and eventual use of the funds unresolved.
