A dormant Satoshi-era Bitcoin wallet has jolted back to life after 13 years, transferring its entire 909.38 BTC balance, worth approximately $84.6 million at current prices, into a fresh BTC address.
Onchain data from blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence shows that the address first received Bitcoin (BTC) in 2013, when one coin was still trading at under $7, implying a paper gain in excess of 13,900 times.
For comparison, if, instead of buying 909.38 BTC, worth around $6,400 in 2013, the same amount had gone into a low‑cost S&P 500 index fund, it would be worth roughly $37,000 today, after a gain of around 481%.
Over the same roughly 13‑year window, benchmark gold prices have risen around 150%; solid returns, but still dwarfed by a 13,900x Bitcoin move.
A dormant BTC wallet wakes up. Source: Arkham Intelligence
Related: Dormant Bitcoin wallet moves $536M after over 5-year hiatus
Old whales are waking up
The dormant whale transfer comes after a revival of older wallets in 2024–25, when long‑dormant addresses, including 10‑plus‑year “OG” holders, collectively moved over $50 billion worth of BTC. Onchain data showed tens of thousands of those ancient coins were ultimately spent.
For investors, the human side of this story is almost as striking as the numbers. Holding through multiple 70–80% drawdowns, the 2017 and 2021 bubbles, major exchange failures, contentious forks like Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin SV (BSV), and rolling regulatory crackdowns would have required unusual conviction (or, perhaps, the possibility of the owner simply losing their keys and only recently recovering access).
The Jan. 19 shift to a new address could be routine (albeit slightly delayed) security hygiene, a change of custody, or the first step toward eventual liquidation, and onchain analysts will be watching closely to see whether the funds flow to known exchange wallets.
Related: Jefferies’ ‘Greed & Fear’ strategist cuts Bitcoin allocation to zero on quantum risk
Quantum risk and “exposed” UTXOs
Early holders may also be repositioning in response to a growing chorus of warnings about future quantum attacks on Bitcoin’s elliptic‑curve signatures, the cryptographic signatures Bitcoin uses to prove that someone with the private key authorized a transaction.
This is particularly pertinent for older UTXOs (the “unspent transaction outputs” that make up a wallet’s balance and represent individual chunks of BTC created by past transactions), which have already exposed their public keys.
While most cryptographers still see quantum computers as years away, recent research has urged the ecosystem to prepare migration paths to post‑quantum schemes, a risk that could motivate security-conscious OGs to move coins into newer setups even if they are not yet selling.
Magazine: Kevin O’Leary says quantum attacking Bitcoin would be a waste of time
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