A Bitcoin wallet that has held 4,581.94 BTC since March 2020 sent its entire balance to five new addresses on October 12, moving about $377 million in a single transaction. The transfer confirmed in block 971,126 at approximately 18:37 UTC, with Bitcoin trading around $82,350.
Four of the receiving addresses received exactly 1,000 BTC each, while the fifth received 581.94 BTC. The transaction paid a fee of 732 satoshis, approximately 60 cents. As of October 13, none of the five addresses has spent any funds.
Long-Term Holder
The wallet received its coins on March 3, 2020, in a transaction that split a larger balance. At roughly $8,830 per Bitcoin, the 4,581.94 BTC was worth approximately $40.5 million at the time. The value of the Bitcoin has increased nearly 10 times since then.
The coins remained untouched through multiple market downturns. The wallet's value dropped to approximately $17.6 million during the COVID-19 crisis, fell to $131 million following Tesla's suspension of Bitcoin payments and China's mining crackdown in May 2021, and declined to about $71 million following the Terra, Celsius, and FTX collapses in 2022.
Dust Deposits and Address Poisoning
The wallet received 22 dust deposits—small transfers of a few hundred to a few thousand satoshis—between August 2020 and May 2026. Most arrived in batch transactions paying multiple addresses simultaneously.
On January 28, 2025, an address beginning 18VpNbPc and ending pQ9x sent the wallet 600 satoshis. This address shared the first three and last four characters with the whale's address, matching the pattern of address poisoning, an attack in which an attacker generates an address copying the real one's characters to trick users into sending funds to the wrong address. The whale did not fall for the attempt.
Reasons for Movement
Large Bitcoin holders, known as whales, move their coins for various reasons, including privacy and safety concerns. Some analysts and traders view dormant wallet movements as potential precursors to selling as holders realize significant gains.
In July 2025, an entity moved 80,000 BTC that had sat for 14 years, worth $8.6 billion. Ten days later, a Satoshi-era wallet sent 40,009 BTC to Galaxy Digital, which later said it had executed a sale worth approximately $9 billion for a Satoshi-era client.
