During the last seven days, bitcoin’s price has remained above the $16K region following the aftermath of FTX’s collapse. Since then, a number of ‘sleeping bitcoins’ that sat idle for five to nine years have been moving during the last four days. Bitcoins that were worth far less back then are being transferred for the first time in years.
$20M Worth of Old Bitcoins Move After Sitting Dormant for Years
Bitcoin’s (BTC) price has remained steady during the last seven days, ranging between $16,150 to $16,995 per unit, and a brief jump over the $17K zone. Over the last four days, while BTC prices are much lower than they were at the start of November, hundreds of old bitcoins have been on the move.
For instance, two owners spent 348 bitcoin on Nov. 29, 2022, and the stash was once worth $348,000. We can’t really tell whether or not the transferred coins were sold, but they were spent from addresses created almost six years ago. Heuristics also indicate that out of the 348 bitcoin that sat dormant since March 2017, 299 of that BTC likely belonged to the same owner.
The five 59.99 BTC spends discovered by btcparser.com were all from the same owner.
The 348 BTC is worth roughly 5.8 million nominal U.S. dollars using current BTC exchange rates. One owner controlled “17HxA,” an address created on March 29, 2017, and it spent 48.88 BTC at block height 765,168. Coincidently, five more transactions, from addresses created at the end of March 2017, spent 59.99 BTC in each transaction at block heights 765,169, 765,184, 765,185, 765,187, and 765,190.
On the same day, blockchain parsers from btcparser.com caught a 173.61 BTC spend from an idle address created on June 14, 2017, and another 100 BTC spend from an address created on April 12, 2014. The 100 bitcoin sat in an address idle for close to nine years, and at the time, each BTC was worth less than $500 per unit.
Following these old spends, a transaction from an address first seen close to ten years ago, on April 26, 2013, beat all the spends transacted on Nov. 29, 2022. The transaction took place on Dec. 2, 2022, and the wallet “1EaAv” spent 600 so-called ‘sleeping bitcoins.’ The 600 BTC was worth around $84,000 on April 26, 2013, and today the coins that were spent at block height 765,644, are worth roughly $10.14 million using current BTC exchange rates.
Data shows that out of all the bitcoins spent since Nov. 29, which slept for roughly five to nine years, all of them combined were worth less than $800K in value at the time the original addresses were created. Using exchange rates today, the 1,221.45 BTC that stemmed from ‘sleeping bitcoin’ addresses equates to around $20 million. Old holders are moving bitcoins that sat dormant for five to nine years, while current bitcoin prices are at the lowest values in two years.
