Bitcoin OG From 2011 Wakes Up, Cashes In On A 322,000x Gain

A Bitcoin whale from 2011 has suddenly come alive, moving 3,962 BTC. Here’s how much profit the OG made on their ancient stack.

Bitcoin Whale Has Shown Movement After 14.5 Years Of Silence

In a post on X, on-chain sleuth Lookonchain pointed out how a Bitcoin whale wallet silent since 14.5 years ago finally broke its dormancy today. The wallet in question received 3,962 BTC back in January 2011.

At the time, the cryptocurrency was trading around $0.37, so this amount would have only been worth about $1,460. After amassing this sum, the investor’s address went completely cold.

It’s possible that the wallet became lost, either by having its existence forgotten or keys misplaced. This is generally the likely reason behind wallets going dormant for long periods. The less probable explanation could be that the silence corresponded to willful HODLing by the investor.

Whatever the case be, the wallet finally showed activity earlier today and made a test transaction of 0.0018 BTC.

And now, it has completely emptied itself out, shifting coins to a new wallet.

At the time of this new transaction, the wallet’s 3,962 BTC stack was worth a whopping $469 million. Given that the initial investment was of just around $1,460, this humongous amount is practically all profit.

Generally, when dormant wallets move their coins, it’s a sign that they are planning to sell. If this is the case for the current address, the question may be: why now of all times, 14.5 years later? Assuming that the wallet was indeed lost, it’s possible that it has just now been rediscovered. Thus, it may have simply been impossible to shift these coins until now.

But in the scenario that the Bitcoin wallet was rediscovered earlier or the investor never actually lost access to it, then the reason may be that the current bull run highs have just looked like a convenient window for finally cashing in.

In another X post, Lookonchain shared the latest inflow/outflow data for the Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

As is visible above, the 7-day ETF netflow currently stands at positive for both Bitcoin and Ethereum, but the daily netflow has printed a negative value for the former. In total, 751 BTC ($89 million) has left the ETFs over the past day. Fidelity’s FBTC has led the outflows, with 1,919 BTC ($227 million) exiting the fund.

In contrast, ETH ETFs have seen a significant inflow of 110,868 ($404 million) tokens in the same window.

BTC Price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is floating around $118,900, unchanged from one week ago.