Bitcoin Whale Moves Nearly $8M After 10 Years of Inactivity

Another sleeping Bitcoin whale just woke up.

Today, a holder who hadn’t touched their cryptocurrency for a decade moved over 279 BTC—or $7.8 million worth—to three new wallets, according to a tweet from on-chain sleuth, Lookonchain. 

The blockchain tracker said in a Friday tweet that the whale in question had originally received 1,128 BTC in the months of October 2012 and May 2013, when prices were about $12 and $195, respectively. In total, the whale holds $31.6 million in BTC.

Ancient, untouched Bitcoin stashes have been on the move lately. “Whales”—those who have hoarded huge amounts of cryptocurrency—sometimes reemerge after a long stretch of time to move their investment to other addresses. 

In February, an old BTC address that had not budged in 11 years came back to life to move $9.6 million worth of the cryptocurrency—which had appreciated by 120,000,000% over the years.

Bitcoin whales are the most successful crypto investors, according to research from the Bank for International Settlements. In February, it said that those who sit on the asset for years tend to do well, while the retail investor who buys and sells in a short time frame typically loses out. 

Blockchain firm Arkham Intelligence told Decrypt in February that data shows that Bitcoin investors are again focusing on long-term gains, as over 53% of coins ever minted hadn’t budged for more than two years by that point.

Number of Bitcoin Whales Drops to Lowest Level Since 2019

The number of Bitcoin (BTC) whales, or wallet addresses holding 1,000 or more BTC, hit its lowest level since August 2019 on Sunday. There were 2,027 whales on Sunday, February 19, according to crypto analytics service Glassnode; the last time their number dropped this low was August 5, 2019, when they numbered 2,023. Owning that much Bitcoin at its current price of around $25,000 represents a sizeable show of faith in the digital currency, with each whale holding almost $25 million in Bitcoin....

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading for about $27,900, according to CoinGecko, still way below—by nearly 60%—the $69,045 all-time high it hit in November 2021. It is also down over 8% in the past week. 

But the largest digital asset by market cap is still up massively this year, having gone from under $17,000 in January to $30,000 last week.