The reactivation of long-dormant old wallets in the cryptocurrency market continues to attract attention. Most recently, a Bitcoin wallet untouched for approximately 13 years sparked curiosity by moving 2,100 BTC.
A massive move after 13 years
According to on-chain data, the transaction took place on Friday. Approximately 2,100 BTC, worth about $147.7 million, was involved in a new transaction around 13:00 Turkish time. According to blockchain analysis platforms, this transfer occurred by combining multiple UTXOs under a single output. While the majority of the transaction remains at the same "1NB3Z" address, a small amount appears to have been sent to a different address. This suggests a possible technical adjustment to take advantage of lower transaction fees.
The history of this wallet is quite remarkable. It was first sent on July 4, 2012, during Bitcoin's early days, with a total of 2,100 BTC. At the time, the total value of these assets was only $13,685. Today, the same amount of Bitcoin is worth approximately $147 million, indicating a more than 10,000-fold increase in value. It's noteworthy that the funds haven't yet been moved to another address, and there's no information about the wallet owner's identity or the purpose of the transfer. On-chain analytics platforms indicate that the address is untagged, making it unclear whether it belongs to an institutional or individual investor. Technically, this wallet appears to be an older generation Bitcoin address. Addresses starting with "1" belong to the oldest address format known as Pay-to-PubKey-Hash (P2PKH). Later, P2SH addresses starting with "3", SegWit addresses starting with "bc1q", and the most current format, Taproot addresses starting with "bc1p", were introduced. Despite this, the wallet owner's preference to keep their assets in the old format is noteworthy. Recently, there has been an increase in wallet activity belonging to early-stage Bitcoin investors. This activity seems to have accelerated, particularly following Bitcoin's projected peak of around $126,000 in 2025. Last year, Galaxy Digital released 80,000 BTC that had been inactive for 14 years as part of a client's asset planning, a sale valued at over $9 billion at the time. Similarly, in September, another early-stage investor reportedly converted a significant portion of their Bitcoin holdings into Ethereum, resulting in a rotation worth billions of dollars. More recently, an investor who had accumulated 5,000 BTC approximately 13 years ago resumed selling, divesting 1,000 BTC. Around the same time, early-stage investor Owen Gunden reportedly made hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin sales.
