Dormant Bitcoin Giants Stir: Five Ancient Miner Wallets Awaken, Amass 50 BTC
Sleeping crypto giants just flexed their muscles—five legacy miner wallets from Bitcoin's early days suddenly sprang to life. Their move? Consolidating a cool 50 BTC in what could be a strategic play—or just old hands checking their lottery tickets.
Why now? Speculation runs wild as these OG holders—likely sitting on mined coins from sub-$100 days—decide to shuffle their stacks. Market watchers are torn: Is this a bullish signal or just proof that even crypto grandpas spring-clean their portfolios?
One thing’s certain—when wallets untouched for over a decade start moving, the market holds its breath. Meanwhile, Wall Street still can’t decide if Bitcoin’s a ‘store of value’ or a ‘risk asset’—maybe try ‘both’ with a side of volatility.
Bitcoin moves from untouched block rewards
The bitcoin moved all came from untouched block rewards of 50 coins, received on April 2010. The wallets come from the Satoshi era, mined at a much lower difficulty and minimal electricity expenses.
5 miner wallets woke up after being dormant for over 15 years and transferred 250 $BTC($29.6M) out an hour ago.
These miner wallets earned 50 $BTC each from mining on Apr 26, 2010.
Wallets:
1NuqAKeX6JzW372QfEe7eFkewFx21fnqd3
12EWRT19v2eAvWjGDWjodCe7NP1CzmFphT… pic.twitter.com/vGttaE6MxY
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) July 31, 2025
As with other addresses from before 2011, the wallets in question were dusted with an op_return transaction, issuing a pseudo-legal claim on the coins. While the attack is unable to really establish ownership over the coins, the transactions seem to have become a trigger for securing the ancient coins into new addresses.
The recent miner selling arrived just a day after another ancient investor moved 3,963 BTC.
The relatively small amounts of coins are not able to affect the market, which recently absorbed sales of 80K BTC without crashing the price. However, old miner coins with no history may be valuable to treasuries. Small-scale treasury buyers can join the top 100 of corporate holders with as low as 29 Bitcoin, meaning even a few older BTC can help create the basis for reserves with provable origin.
Miner reserves turn lower on profit-taking
Prominent mining companies often retain their coins, forming an organic treasury. Big-scale entities like Mara Holdings have expanded their wallets above 50,000 BTC.
Overall, miners decreased their reserves from 1.9M Bitcoin down to 1.8M, based on Cryptoquant data. Despite this, hashrate remains high, barring seasonal fluctuations due to low hydroelectric power resources.
Based on the hash ribbon indicator, miners are producing blocks very close to distress conditions. This time, there is no clear miner capitulation, but some are taking profits to make use of the low production price of their older BTC. The selling may also be a part of the pivot to AI data centers, which some of the biggest mining companies have taken up.
The Bitcoin hashrate is back above 915 EH/s, with difficulty near its all-time high. Mining remains extremely competitive, though companies are still ready to build mining facilities for their own use, or to lend hashrate.
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