From CoinDesk · By Omkar Godbole
A long-dormant bitcoin wallet transferred about 4,582 BTC, worth $377.6 million, to five addresses Monday, and none of the recipients has moved the coins.
The wallet received the Bitcoin in March 2020, days before the cryptocurrency plunged below $4,000, when the holdings were worth about $40.8 million.
Transfers from long-inactive wallets can signal potential selling and market volatility, but the move could also be a routine transfer between addresses controlled by the same owner.
A bitcoin BTC$82,292.69 whale that received its coins days before the Covid crash of March 2020 and sat through it has moved $377.6 million worth of them.
The wallet, 18VmXvkF4cgLi35RtMiHHDpvMjUCyVpQ9x, sent roughly 4,582 BTC to five addresses on Monday, according to blockchain data from Arkham and mempool.space, two public explorers that show every bitcoin transaction.
Four of the addresses got exactly 1,000 BTC each. The fifth got about 582 BTC. As of this writing, none of the five has moved the coins.
The coins arrived in that wallet on March 3, 2020, from the address 17VX1BEjYVyBMi2vw6nXDrpwMvCSweHZot, the same records show. Nine days later, Covid-19 panic hit markets and bitcoin plunged more than 40% to under $4,000. The market has not revisited that price since.
The coins were worth about $40.8 million when they arrived. By yesterday’s transfer, their value had risen roughly ninefold.
The wallet sent nothing out for more than four years after receiving them. Its first outgoing transaction came in August 2024. That was a small payment of 0.009 BTC to bc1qmpjs55x326wvnvtwvkwfqqzzlyljk7ffmdw32g, with the rest of the bitcoin returned to the same wallet.
Several onchain analysts have flagged a relation between long-dormant whales moving coins and market volatility. According to data and insights from CryptoQuant, sudden surges in metrics like Coin Days Destroyed (CDD) and older Spent Output Age Bands frequently serve as leading indicators of a price correction or high volatility.
That’s because large transfers from long-held wallets are often interpreted as a sign that the owner may be preparing to sell. But they can also reflect routine security measures, such as moving coins between addresses controlled by the same owner. The purpose of the latest transfer remains unclear.
Recently, addresses linked to the US government moved bitcoin worth at least $1.5 billion. It remains unclear whether those transfers were intended for sale or were internal movements between government-controlled wallets.