Bitcoin whale moves 411 BTC worth $34 million, untouched since 2013 when it cost $131

A bitcoin wallet that had not moved a coin since September 2013 sent its entire balance of 411.45 BTC, worth about $34 million, to a new address on Sunday. The whale got most of the coins on 11 September 2013, when bitcoin traded at about $131, so the stash cost around $54,000 and is now worth more than 600 times that, CoinDesk reported, citing blockchain data from Arkham Intelligence.

The bitcoin whale in rupees

The rupee figures use today's interbank dollar rate from our dollar to rupee page; the 2013 cost is shown at today's rate for comparison, not the rate of the time. Bitcoin's live price in dollars and rupees is on our bitcoin page.

Where the coins went

The transfer went through at 18:23 UTC on Sunday 18 October (11:23pm Pakistan time) and paid a fee of just 337 satoshis, a tiny fraction of a cent. All 411.45 BTC landed in one fresh address using SegWit (P2WPKH), a newer and cheaper address format than the old one the coins had sat in for 13 years. That address has received only this transfer and has sent nothing on.

Crucially, the coins have not gone to an exchange, which is where they would normally be sent to be sold. CoinDesk read the move as "custodial maintenance rather than an impending market dump": an owner moving old coins into a modern wallet.

A warning about address poisoning

Over the years the old wallet had received dozens of tiny "dust" deposits, several of them from addresses Arkham labels as phishing. This is a known scam called address poisoning: scammers send a small amount from an address that looks like one you use, hoping you copy the wrong address from your history next time. The owner did not fall for it.

If you hold crypto, always check the full address, not just the first and last characters, before you send.

Not the only old wallet waking up

Two other wallets that had been dormant for more than a decade moved a combined 417 BTC the day before, according to the on-chain tracker Lookonchain, and a week earlier a wallet untouched since before the 2020 Covid crash moved funds too. Traders watch these moves closely because early holders selling large amounts can push prices down; in 2025 several long-dormant mega-whales woke up in the same way.

Bitcoin is near $82,700 today, after dipping below $80,000 last week for the first time in a month, as we reported on 16 October.