Dormant Bitcoin Whale Moves $188M After Seven Years, Fueling Market Watch

A Bitcoin wallet that sat untouched for seven years transferred its entire balance of 2,931 BTC, worth about US$188 million (AU$270.8 million), to a new address on Sunday, according to on-chain trackers Lookonchain and Onchain Lens.

The sending wallet, labelled “Bitcoin OG” on the Arkham data platform, received the coins on October 23, 2018, when BTC traded near US$6,513 (AU$9,379). 

The full balance left an address beginning 356my and landed at one beginning bc1qn, according to the tracker data. The stash was worth about US$19 million (AU$27.4 million) at the time, so Sunday’s move carries an on-paper gain of nearly 10-fold across a holding period that spanned two full market cycles.

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No Exchange Link Identified

The receiving address is an unmarked wallet with no known exchange or over-the-counter desk affiliation, according to the tracker data. That detail matters for traders watching the move: coins shifted between private wallets are not the same as coins deposited to an exchange, which is the step that typically precedes a sale.

The transfer landed at about 3:41 pm US Eastern time on Sunday, and the trackers reported no further movement from the new address as of Monday. 

Bitcoin traded near US$62,500 (AU$90,000) on July 13, down about 1.3 per cent over 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data. At that price, the moved coins last changed hands when Bitcoin was worth roughly a tenth of its current value.

CryptoQuant’s exchange whale ratio stood at 0.99 around the time of the move, with about 99 per cent of Bitcoin deposited to exchanges coming from the 10 largest individual transfers, according to the firm’s data.

Sunday’s mover joins that list with its coins parked at a fresh address and, so far, no recorded step toward an exchange.

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