$115 Million Bitcoin Whale Wakes Up From 10-Year Slumber – What’s Next?

Bitcoin is still pushing a price recovery on its quest to return to the $70,000 price level. This has seen the cryptocurrency now trading above $69,000, up by 1.6% in the past 24 hours. This price fluctuation has occurred in the middle of increased accumulation activity from some whales and some short-term holders. 

Blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain has revealed an instance of whale activity on social media. An interesting transaction came from a whale wallet which recently woke up after 10 years of dormancy to transfer 246 BTC worth $16.73 million.

The Bitcoin blockchain is home to a vast number of early investors with large amounts of BTC that have remained dormant for many years. In fact, the re-ignition of dormant Bitcoin addresses has been sporadic for the past six months, particularly as the price of Bitcoin surged to new all-time highs and with most causing a stir and rising interest amongst Bitcoin investors.

According to Lookonchain, a new Bitcoin whale address has been added to the roster of wallets raised from the dead. The whale address “1CLxmH” which held 1,701 BTC (worth $115 million at the time of writing) during its 10-year period of dormancy, recently woke up and transferred 246 BTC worth $16.73 million into another wallet. Interestingly, on-chain data shows the whale address received 4,272 BTC throughout 2013 at an average price of $29.39. 

A whale with 1,701 $BTC($115.42M) woke up after 10 years of dormancy and transferred 246 $BTC($16.73M) out 20 mins ago.

The whale received 4,272 $BTC($125,541 at the time) in 2013 at an average price of only $29.39.

Address: 1CLxmHRhoi9VpSj5QihqPEdbhLL8E1oeUZ pic.twitter.com/W45On1Q7vb

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) April 6, 2024

Reactivations of old dormant wallets are often driven by whales looking to sell all or some of their holdings. Massive selloffs like this often lead to a price slump and increase the selling pressure from short-term investors. However, the motive behind the reactivation of dormant addresses is impossible to predict and not all of them indicate profit-taking. 

In this case, transaction data shows the assets were transferred into two new private wallets. 50 BTC were transferred into address “1PRREb,” while 195 BTC were transferred into address “bc1qga.” At the time of writing, address “1CLxmH” still holds 1,455 BTC worth $100.89 million. 

In the ongoing spirit of an accumulation from whales, Lookonchain outlined a new purchase from another whale address. This address, which has accumulated 1,308 BTC worth $89.75 million at an average price of $68,617 since March 6, purchased another 113.735 BTC worth $7.85 million from Binance less than 12 hours ago. With Bitcoin trading at $69,348, this wallet now holds $90.7 million worth of the cryptocurrency.

Blockchain analytics platform Santiment noted this accumulation pattern by the whales, revealing wallets holding between 100 and 100,000 BTC have purchased $21.6 billion worth of the cryptocurrency in the last three months. 

Featured image from Pexels, chart from TradingView