Bitcoin Wallet Dormant for 13 Years Emptied of All Its Bitcoins

The assets in a wallet containing 500 Bitcoins were valued at approximately $500,000 in 2013. The final return for the address owner amounted to 6160%—that's over 37% annually. Experts at Lookonchain suggested the Bitcoin investor might have moved the funds due to concerns related to the ongoing series of hacks targeting Coldcard hardware wallets.

In total, according to data from the analytics platform CryptoQuant, around 935 Bitcoins that had been inactive for ten years or longer were moved on Monday, August 3rd. This is the largest single-day volume since March 20th. A significant increase in activity was also observed on July 31st among addresses that hadn't been used for five to seven years: approximately 6388 $BTC were moved then. Blockchain researchers at CryptoQuant also hypothesize that the surge in activity is linked to the incidents surrounding Coldcard hardware wallets: owners of old wallets are mass transferring funds to new ones for security reasons.

The damage from the hacks of Coldcard hardware wallets has exceeded $100 million, analysts at Galaxy Research estimated on Tuesday, August 4th. According to their information, approximately 7,300 addresses were attacked, from which 1,596 Bitcoins were stolen. Security specialists assert that the attacks are still ongoing, and the damage could increase to 2,055 Bitcoins.

The first attack on Coldcard wallets occurred on July 30th. At that time, unknown actors stole 594.5 $BTC worth $38 million from 500 addresses. At least three waves of attacks have been recorded, and a fourth is currently underway: on August 3rd, a movement of approximately 388.9 $BTC from 462 victim addresses was identified over roughly two and a half hours. The rate at which the wallets were drained, according to the company's estimates, was 45 times higher than the usual level.