Bitcoin whale moves 411 BTC untouched since 2013

A bitcoin holder who received 411 BTC in September 2013, when one coin cost about $131, moved the entire balance on Sunday for the first time in 13 years. At around $82,600 per coin, the stash is now worth roughly $34 million, up from about $54,000 when it landed, according to blockchain data from Arkham Intelligence cited by CoinDesk.

What moved

• Amount: all 411.45 BTC in the wallet, sent in one transaction at 18:23 UTC on Sunday, Oct 18.
• Cost: a fee of 337 satoshis, a fraction of a cent.
• Destination: a brand-new address using the modern SegWit (P2WPKH) format, replacing the older format of the 2013 wallet. The new address has received only this transfer and has not sent anything onward.

The owner never bought, sold or moved a coin in between, riding out three halvings, the 2017 boom, the 2022 FTX collapse and the 2024 launch of spot bitcoin ETFs, while the price rose more than 600-fold.

Dust from scammers

The wallet was not completely silent. Dozens of tiny deposits worth less than a dollar each arrived over the years, several from addresses Arkham labels as phishing. This is address poisoning: scammers send "dust" from look-alike addresses hoping the owner copies the wrong one from their history during a later transfer. Checking the full address before sending, not just the first and last characters, is one of the habits in our guide on how to spot crypto scams.

Part of a wider wake-up

The move follows two other wallets, dormant for more than a decade, that shifted a combined 417 BTC a day earlier, and a large wallet untouched since the pre-Covid crash that migrated funds the week before. Such moves often spark fears of selling, but as in similar episodes in 2025, the coins went to new private wallets rather than exchanges. Long-dormant coins are also at the centre of the debate over whether quantum computers could break bitcoin, although nothing suggests that motivated this transfer. For the basics of keeping coins safe for the long run, see how to store crypto safely.