On Sunday, December 19, a dormant address that received 235 bitcoin in 2013 was activated after more than nine years of sitting idle. Bitcoin’s price has dropped lower after reaching its all-time high on November 10, and throughout December, records show a great number of so-called ‘sleeping bitcoins’ have activated during this period.
Dormant addresses wake up after years of sleep
On the day bitcoin (BTC) hit an all-time high of $ 69,000 per unit on November 10, a 2010 miner also spent 1,000 dormant bitcoins and 1,000 bitcoin cash (BCH). The 1,000 bitcoins came from 20 block rewards mined over ten years ago in 2010. This same entity spent 1,000 BTC and an additional 1,000 BCH the following day. Additionally, a single block from 2010 worth 50 BTC or $ 2.3 million was spent on November 3.
During the month of November, a total of 11 block rewards that were ten years old and mined in 2011, were activated and sent to new BTC addresses. That’s a total of 550 BTC worth $25.8 million using today’s bitcoin exchange rates. So far, for the month of December 2021, a total of four 2011 block rewards with 200 BTC worth $9.3 million was activated. There haven’t been any 2010 block rewards spent but seven blocks from 2012 were activated, 14 blocks from 2013, and five blocks from 2014.
“Waking up” does not necessarily mean “Sold”
On November 22, a dormant address that had 187 bitcoins sitting for eight years moved 13 BTC and kept 174.43 BTC idle in the wallet. The corresponding BCH and BSV in the wallet still contain 187 coins each and have not been spent. Two days earlier, another wallet with sleeping bitcoins that had been left for 8.1 years had been activated on November 20. The whale’s address spent 1,299.98 BTC that day worth $ 61 million today, but it did not spend the 1,299 BCH and BSV.
Two more idle addresses with old bitcoins were activated during the month of November on the 10th and 11th. On November 11, an address with 234 BTC was activated after 7.5 years and unloaded 53.16 BTC that day. The day before, when BTC tapped $69K per unit and the mystery whale spent 1,000 BTC from 2010, a dormant address from 2013 or 8.1 years ago was activated. The address moved 2,207.60 BTC or $103.7 million worth of bitcoin using today’s exchange rates.
Regardless, the owners of very old bitcoin wallets have decided to transfer their coins for the first time in many years. It should be noted that the terms “spent” or “spend” in this article do not necessarily mean that bitcoin has been “sold” to a third party for fiat or other crypto asset.
The so-called ‘sleeping bitcoins’ could have been sold or could have been merely transferred to different wallets. Lots of these wallets see coins move from legacy bitcoin addresses to addresses that support Segregated Witness (Segwit) addresses (Bech32). Although, most of the popular crypto exchanges worldwide support Bech32 addresses and many of these coins very well could have been sold for fiat.
