Sleeping Bitcoin Giant Awakens: Whale Moves 1,000 BTC After 10 Years Slumber

On-chain data shows a chunk of Bitcoin previously dormant since 10+ years ago has just been moved across the blockchain by a whale.

Bitcoin Whale Transfers 1,000 BTC Unmoved Since 10+ Years Ago

As pointed out by CryptoQuant Netherlands community manager Maartunn in a post on X, the BTC network has just witnessed the movement of coins dormant since 10+ years ago.

The indicator of interest here is the “Spent Output Age Bands” (SOAB), which measures the total amount of coins that the various Bitcoin age bands are moving across the chain right now.

The age bands here refer to groups of tokens divided based on the amount of time they have remained dormant on the network for (that is, the time that they have spent sitting still inside the same address, without being involved in transactions).

For example, the 1 day to 1 week age band includes all coins that had their last transaction at least 1 day and at most 1 week ago. The SOAB for this particular group would track the movements of coins satisfying this condition.

Naturally, once a coin dormant for some period finally moves on the network, it would exit out from whatever age band it was in, as its age would reset back to zero. Thus, its age prior to the transaction is what the SOAB looks for.

In the context of the current discussion, one age band in particular is of relevance: the 10+ years cohort. The below chart shows the recent trend in the SOAB for this Bitcoin group:

As displayed in the graph, the 10+ years age band has recently made a huge movement. In total, the group has transferred 1,000 BTC (worth around $67 million at the current exchange rate) across the network in this move.

Given the large scale of the coins, it’s likely that a whale entity was involved here. Now, why would the whale suddenly move their coins after such a long period of silence?

Well, generally, when coins grow this old, it’s more likely than not because of them becoming lost, rather than due to a motive like HODLing. Thus, it’s possible that the coins in question also had their keys become misplaced and it’s only recently that the whale found access back to them.

In the unlikely case that the investor here truly was a HODLer, then they would have to be the hardest of diamond hands, given that in the past decade, Bitcoin has gone through multiple bull runs, and thus, there were already many opportunities to sell for large profits.

A few days ago, Maartunn also posted about a movement from a whale that was similarly ancient, except this one moved double the number of coins: 2,000 BTC.

Movements of such old coins can be a sign of selling, but historically, this has been a normal part of bull markets, as the cryptocurrency tends to get back into public attention during this time, and users become motivated to search around for lost wallets. Usually, such selling gets absorbed by the market.

BTC Price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around the $67,000 level, up 18% over the past week.