Dormant Bitcoin wallet from 2014 moves BTC worth $10.2m

A Bitcoin wallet that had been dormant since 2014 suddenly woke up and carried 174 Bitcoins worth more than $102 million.

Blockchain data showed that the Bitcoin (BTC) wallet that received 174.88 BTC on January 8, 2014, moved money for the first time on August 16, 2024.

This transfer comes after a decade in which Bitcoin’s price rose to as high as $73,000 and then fell to current levels.

Transaction cost

While BTC’s initial value in 2014 was around $142,000, the staggering gains the flagship cryptocurrency has seen since then means that 174.88 bitcoins are currently worth more than $10.2 million.

Blockchain tracker Whale Alert detected this dormant Bitcoin wallet movement on August 16.

The transaction fee for the transfer was 67,500 satoshis, or $39.43, which is a relatively low amount, but according to mempool details, it was still a 50x overpayment that allowed the $10.2 million transaction to be confirmed quickly.

The wallet’s assets were around $896,000 in October 2018 and surpassed the $5 million mark in late January 2021.

According to data from blockchain explorer Blockchair, the balance of the addresses currently stands at 0.00004226 BTC, which is worth $2.50 based on Bitcoin’s current price of $59,300.

Bitcoin wallets are waking up

The last few months have seen an increase in the frequency of dormant Bitcoin addresses being awakened to move millions of dollars worth of BTC. Notably, Satoshi-era addresses (those holding coins mined in the first few months of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto’s time) are not as common.

However, over the past few months, multiple dormant wallets have suddenly become active, including one that woke up from a 12-year slumber in July of this year and transferred $6.9 million worth of BTC. Another wallet sent $3 million worth of BTC to Binance in June after more than 14 years of inactivity.

Whale Alert also detected this other dormant wallet activity.

Currently, around 18.3 million BTC are in dormant Bitcoin wallets, a sharp increase since January 2024, when cumulatively dormant BTC wallets held around 7.4 million coins, BitInfoCharts data shows.

In most cases, investors watch the movement of BTC in dormant wallets as potential sources of new supply pressure on prices. ‘Sell wall’ investors often see prices being pushed and experiencing high volatility as a result.