SMS
A wallet holding 4,581.94 BTC transferred its entire balance to five new addresses on October 12, equivalent to approximately $377 million at the time, with a single transaction fee of just 732 sats.
These bitcoins entered the wallet in March 2020, when they were worth approximately $40.5 million.
This address has received 22 dust transfers since 2020, including a 600 sats transfer on January 28, 2025, from a "visually similar" address that shares the same first three and last four characters as the original wallet address.
On-chain data shows that a wallet holding 4,581.94 BTC since March 2020 transferred its entire balance to five new addresses on October 12, with each transaction amounting to approximately $377 million. The transfer was confirmed in block 971,126 at approximately 18:37 UTC, when the price of Bitcoin was around $82,350.
Four of the receiving addresses each received 1,000 BTC, and the fifth address received 581.94 BTC. The transaction paid a fee of 732 satoshis, where a satoshi is one hundred millionth of a BTC, equivalent to approximately 60 cents. As of block 971,279 on October 13, none of the five addresses have moved any funds, and it remains unclear who controls these wallets or where the bitcoins will ultimately be sent.
This wallet received these bitcoins on March 3, 2020, when a balance of 5,081.95 BTC was split into three parts, with 250 BTC each transferred to two other addresses. At the time, with each bitcoin valued at approximately $8,830, the 4,581.95 BTC that flowed into this wallet amounted to roughly $40.5 million. Since then, the value of bitcoin has nearly increased tenfold.
This wallet also demonstrates the power of patience. Since these bitcoins entered the wallet, they have weathered multiple market shocks, beginning with the COVID-19 crisis, which erupted shortly after the wallet was funded. During that period, the value of this holding dropped from approximately $40.5 million to around $17.6 million.
In May 2021, Tesla suspended Bitcoin payments and China intensified mining regulations, causing the wallet's value to drop from its April peak of approximately $291 million to $131 million in June. The collapses of Terra, Celsius, and FTX in 2022 further reduced its value to around $71 million—a loss of approximately $239 million compared to the November 2021 peak—while the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes also contributed to a roughly 25% decline in the S&P 500 and pushed Bitcoin to a two-year low.
Trump’s tariff shock also caused a significant market downturn. Bitcoin subsequently dropped 54% from its record high of $124,728 to $57,735 before recovering to its current price. During this decline, the wallet’s value fell from $571.5 million to approximately $265 million, but overall, long-term holding has still generated a net return of nearly 10 times the initial investment.
This address also received dust transactions—small transfers of only a few hundred to a few thousand sats, with negligible sending costs. On-chain data shows that between August 2020 and May 2026, there were 22 such deposits, ranging from 546 sats to 6,953 sats, each worth less than $6 at current prices. Sixteen of these came from batch transactions that distributed funds to between 87 and 610 addresses in a single transaction.
One deposit matches the "address poisoning" pattern: attackers generate addresses that replicate the beginning and ending characters of a legitimate address, hoping victims will accidentally use them when copying addresses from transaction records. On January 28, 2025, an address starting with 18VpNbPc and ending with pQ9x sent 600 sats to this wallet, matching the first three and last four characters of this whale address.
This "visually similar" address was funded by a transaction on November 12, 2024, which distributed funds to 1,401 outputs, and the address was immediately emptied after this payment was sent. All other senders used bc1 addresses, which are entirely different from the traditional address starting with 18 associated with this wallet.
This whale did not fall for it.
Large holders of Bitcoin are commonly referred to as "whales," and their reasons for transferring coins vary, including privacy and security. Analysts and traders worry that such movements often signal selling, as holders may be tempted to cash in on substantial profits.
However, this is not the first time a dormant wallet has moved funds. In July 2025, an entity transferred 80,000 BTC that had been dormant for 14 years, valued at $8.6 billion—the largest single-day transfer of assets older than 10 years that day. Ten days later, a wallet from the Satoshi era sent 40,009 BTC, approximately $4.7 billion, to Galaxy; Galaxy subsequently stated that it executed a sale of approximately $9 billion on behalf of a Satoshi-era client.
As of October 13, the original address still holds 23,288 sats in remaining dust, equivalent to approximately $19, while the five receiving addresses hold the full 4,581.94 BTC.