An anonymous Bitcoin (BTC) whale from the Satoshi era has awoken after 13.4 years of dormancy and made its first transaction, according to a report by Whale Alert. The wallet with the address “1FoicoWy” has been inactive since 17 June 2011, when it received a 20 BTC portion of a 1,033.96 BTC transfer between two anonymous wallets, which involved 51 empty wallets, of which “1FoicoWy” was one.
💤 A dormant address containing 20 #BTC (1,370,949 USD) has just been activated after 13.4 years (worth 333 USD in 2011)!https://t.co/kVjmSgEdlf
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) October 20, 2024
For 13.4 years, this Bitcoin stash was stored there, until yesterday, Oct. 20, 2024, when it was suddenly activated with a transfer to another anonymous wallet, “3Eddvk.”
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This was a new address with no previous transaction history, but it was not the final destination for those 20 BTC, because from there they were transferred to Bitstamp, an old-timer among the major crypto exchanges.
Conventional crypto wisdom has it that such transfers and “epic sudden awakenings” of old Bitcoin whales are rather bearish signs that precede a sell-off on the market. The logic is that old holders are coming back to life to take profits. And there is something to cash in, as in the most recent case, when holding since 2011 brought the investor a return of 411,696%.
Most of the time, recently, such transfers have not seen a continuation, as we saw in this case with Bitstamp. But exactly this case proves concerns about the behavior of old Bitcoin holders valid. And this is only one of 51 recipients. What if another 50 wallets, each containing around 20 BTC, are activated and start depositing on exchanges?