Four wallets that accumulated ETH at an average price of $830 in 2018 moved on Friday after eight years of silence. They put their ETH up for sale at a time when the market was going through one of the deepest pullbacks of this cycle, walking away with gains far below the position’s full potential.
According to Arkham data shared by onchain analytics platform Lookonchain, the four wallets sold a total of 33,623 ETH within roughly four hours, at an average price of $1,560 per coin. The sales generated around $52.5 million in total proceeds, while net profit is estimated at roughly $27.4 million.
Timing Was Painful for the Whales
The numbers may look large on their own, but the real story is the missed opportunity. During both the 2021 and 2025 bull markets, the paper profit of these four wallets had exceeded $150 million, more than five times the amount they ultimately realized. However, the ETH holders chose not to sell at those peaks, and the market is now offering a much lower price.
Ethereum had reached an all-time high of around $4,946 in August 2025. Since then, the price has seen a sharp decline. According to the ETH price page, ETH was trading around $1,565 as of Friday. In other words, the owners of these wallets waited eight years, only to sell near the bottom.
The four addresses behind the sale had purchased a total of 37,602 ETH in 2018 at around $830 per coin. These wallets had not made a single transaction until Friday, when they moved for the first time. The addresses are: 0x71B...D412f, 0x92a...ae49D, 0x6C7...5C327 and 0xffd...5BeE5.
Dormant Wallets Are Waking Up One After Another
This sale is not an isolated case. In recent months, several long-dormant Ethereum wallets have become active again as the market has weakened.
In March, an Ethereum “veteran” who had held for more than a decade reportedly sold $31 million worth of ETH through Coinbase. In April, an ICO-era investor moved 10,000 ETH, worth about $23 million at the time, to a new address after more than ten years of inactivity.
Holding without making a transaction for eight years initially points to a strong long-term investor profile. However, this case shows that in the crypto market, exit timing can be just as decisive as the length of the holding period, no matter how powerful the patient investor narrative may be. Although the wallet owners still made millions of dollars in profit, the charts also show that the sale took place during a period of market weakness.
