Dormant Bitcoin Giants Awaken: Satoshi-Era Wallets Shift 20,000 BTC After 14 Years
Two ancient Bitcoin wallets just shook the crypto world—moving a combined 20,000 BTC for the first time since 2011. Was it Satoshi? A whale? Or just someone who finally remembered their password?
The Sleeping Giants Stir
These time-capsule transactions—worth roughly $1.3 billion at today's prices—come from wallets last active when Bitcoin traded for single digits. The market barely flinched, proving 2025's traders have stronger hands than their 2017 counterparts.
Why Now?
Speculation runs wild: estate planning, exchange migration, or a calculated play ahead of the next halving. Or maybe—just maybe—a crypto OG decided to cash out before traditional finance 'discovers' digital scarcity again.
One thing's certain: in a world of algorithmic stablecoins and tokenized memes, watching raw Bitcoin move still hits different. Even Wall Street's quant bots pause to respect the OGs.
Dormant $2 Billion in Bitcoin Moves as Markets Speculate
According to Lookonchain, one of these wallets was created on April 3, 2011, when Bitcoin was priced at just $0.78. Back then, the owner bought 10,000 BTC for a total cost of less than $7,805.
This wallet showed no activity for over a decade. Then, early on July 4, 2025, the entire BTC balance was moved.
On the same day, lookonchain also detected another wallet that had held 10,000 BTC since 2011, making a similar move.
These two wallets hold a total of 20,000 BTC with a total value of over $2 billion, and have transferred all their bitcoin to new addresses. Such moves are rare for wallets from the “Satoshi era,” referring to Bitcoin’s earliest years when Satoshi Nakamoto was active. These wallets used the legacy format, which was common back then but is now rarely used.
The transfer of 20,000 BTC happened while Bitcoin’s price hovered NEAR record highs, around $110,000 per coin. This added even more intrigue to the owners’ possible motives.
Some users on X suggested that this could be a sign of early investors (OG hodlers) finally deciding to cash out after holding for over a decade. After all, Bitcoin’s price has surged hundreds of thousands of times compared to when they first bought.
“$7,805 to $1.09 Billion… that is the best investment decision of the century…,” X account crypto Alpha said.
Other theories emerged, including the notion that the wallets might have been compromised, but there’s no concrete evidence. The owners could also MOVE their Bitcoin to new wallets for better security or prepare for future transactions.
Whatever the reason, Bitcoin’s price on July 4 stayed relatively stable, hovering around $109,000 without major fluctuations.
Bitcoin’s Coin Days Destroyed Metric Rises in Q2
Coin Days Destroyed (CDD) is an on-chain metric that measures Bitcoin’s true activity level. It looks at how long coins remained “dormant” before being spent.
A high CDD means many “old” coins (with many accumulated coin days) are being moved.
Data from CryptoQuant shows that CDD ROSE from 10 million to 17.5 million in Q2, before dropping back to 11 million in early July.
If long-dormant Bitcoin whale wallets become active and CDD rises sharply, this could significantly negatively affect the price.
