Wallets containing hundreds of Bitcoins, inactive for 5 years or more, suddenly had transaction activity within a week.
According to data from blockchain security tool Blockchair, about 10 wallets containing over 100 Bitcoin (from 6 million USD) have appeared in transactions in recent days. Among them, the wallet that attracted the most attention contained more than 1,000 Bitcoins (61.4 million USD), which transferred money for the first time after 6 years of "resting". The original Bitcoin was purchased on August 25, 2018. The transaction was confirmed on June 27, was transferred to Coinbase in the form of "send all" and has a transaction security level of 55/100.
One day later, a wallet created more than eight years ago, on September 13, 2016, transferred 148.21 Bitcoin (more than 9.1 million USD) to another wallet. However, the transaction security level on this wallet is confirmed to be 0/100, the lowest on the blockchain.
On the same day, June 28, a wallet created on April 1, 2013 also transferred 126.65 Bitcoin (7.8 million USD) with a security level of 35/100. Over a period of 11 years, the wallet had almost no transactions.
The digital currency tracking site BtcParser last week also reported that a number of long-standing Bitcoin wallets were back in operation, such as on June 26, a Bitcoin wallet transfer worth about 3 million USD. This wallet has been inactive since July 14, 2010. Another address transferred 215 Bitcoins ($13.2 million) since last activity on March 31, 2013.
According to Bitcoin.com's prediction, wallets that put money on the exchange, for example a wallet transferring 1,000 Bitcoins, are most likely for sale. Currently priced at more than 61,000 USD per coin, the owners of the wallets seem to have made thousands of times more profit than when they first bought them.
However, for people transferring money to another wallet, it is most likely to increase security. These people still tend to keep the Bitcoin they own. Meanwhile, old wallet technologies have many vulnerabilities and are susceptible to hacker attacks, making the Bitcoins in the wallet also at high risk of being stolen.
According to analytics firms Chainalysis and Fortune, there are currently 1.75 million Bitcoin wallet addresses that have been inactive for over a decade. It is estimated that these wallets contain about 1,798,681 Bitcoins, worth $120 billion, accounting for 8.5% of the total amount of Bitcoins across the network.