Ghost Wallets From 2011 Awaken, Move $23M in Bitcoin

With bitcoin still hovering above the $100,000 mark but slipping since hitting its record high, four vintage wallets from 2011 sprang to life this week, moving 221.99 BTC—worth over $23 million—for the first time in nearly 14 years.

Dormant Bitcoin From 2011 Springs to Life

Early-era bitcoin stashes from 2009, 2010, and 2011 rarely move nowadays, even though a sizeable trove of unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) from these periods remains idle. On May 29, bitcoin’s price fluctuated between $107,107 and $109,057 per coin. During block heights 898916 through 898965, four Pay-to-Public-Key-Hash (P2PKH) addresses transferred the 221.99 BTC.

Each of those 2011 coins ended up being funneled into another P2PKH address, eventually landing in the legacy wallet labeled “1AdsC,” which now holds 279.96 BTC valued at $29.3 million. The tracker btcparser.com flagged the batch of four 2011 wallets (1, 2, 3, 4)—one of which kicked things off with a 64 BTC transfer at block 898916. The second followed right after, pushing 68 BTC in the next block, while a third address moved 60 BTC at block 898919.

The fourth 2011 wallet rounded things out with a 29.99 BTC transfer at block 898965. All four wallets had received their BTC back between July and August 2011, when prices ranged between $6.55 and $11.65 per coin. That puts the stash’s original value at just $2,586—marking a jaw-dropping gain of roughly 889,325%.

Before these 221.99 coins were sent, another group of 2011-era wallets had already stirred earlier in May (1, 2, 3, 4). One moved 10 BTC on May 2, followed by another on May 16 that sent 10.673 BTC across two transactions at block heights 896906 and 896909. Then on May 23, a 2011 wallet pushed out another 20 BTC at block 898040. With these transfers added in, dormant BTC wallets from 2011 have now dispatched 262.663 BTC this month alone.

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