In brief
- A wallet holding 49.97 BTC—received on July 16, 2011—moved the funds on Wednesday at block 961331.
- The stash is worth about $3.2 million now, a 634,347% gain on its roughly $10 average cost basis.
- The receiving wallet has previously routed funds to deposits tied to FalconX, a crypto prime broker, leaving open whether the old coins are being repositioned toward a trading venue.
Another dormant Bitcoin whale has awoken.
An old Bitcoin address holding millions in Bitcoin that had not made any transactions in over 14 years suddenly reactivated yesterday. Per Galaxy Research's monitoring, the Bitcoin address beginning in “1EBz” first took in the Bitcoin on July 16, 2011, when BTC traded under $15. It sat untouched until 20:14 UTC on August 6, 2026, when a single transaction swept the balance to a fresh address.
At roughly $10 per coin, the 49.97 BTC cost about $500 to acquire in mid-2011. Priced near $65,000 today, the position is worth $3.23 million—a 634,347% gain. That return profile is specific to Bitcoin's earliest years, when the asset was a thinly traded experiment rather than a $1.3 trillion market. Few holders kept the funds, or the keys, that long.
The destination wallet then sent funds to a FalconX-labeled wallet, according to data from Arkham Intelligence. FalconX is a prime broker that serves trading firms and institutions, not a retail exchange. The link does not confirm a sale, but it does raise the possibility that whoever controls the coins is consolidating them or staging a move closer to a venue where they could be sold or used as collateral.
🌚 Awakened — dormant 14+ years
49.97 BTC ($3.23M) untouched since first received 2011-07-16 (15.0y ago) — just moved in block 961331Address: 1EBzWeno4frVz5hKp3LvVRpN84cpfJzYjL
No attribution💰 Realized PnL: +$3.23M (+634,347% gain) - basis ~$10 avg - held 15.0y
🕐 2026-08-06…— Galaxy Research (@glxyresearch) August 6, 2026
This isn't a one-off. Old coins waking up is a recurring theme in Bitcoin, and make waves almost every time a movement like this happens.
A Satoshi-era Bitcoin whale moved $11 million after 12 years asleep back in 2023, and another "ancient" stash changed wallets after 12 years dormant. Back in 2024, nearly 50,000 BTC worth $2 billion shifted after sitting since 2013, with analysts blaming an exchange or custodian rebalancing rather than one lucky early adopter. Bitcoin whales woke up repeatedly in 2025 and moved billions.
In most of those cases the destination pointed to professional infrastructure, not a private holder suddenly cashing out.
The metric watchers use here is "Coin Days Destroyed," also called Satoshi Days. Every day a coin stays unmoved, it accrues one "day" of age. When it finally moves, those accumulated days are destroyed at once, so a single transfer from a 2011 wallet erases more than 5,400 days per coin—a large score that signals an old balance changing hands.
A big print can mean an early adopter is taking profit, or simply relocating coins for security or custody. The number shows the movement happened; it does not say why, which is why some traders take that into consideration, expecting a price dump if the hodler realizes their profit.
The BTC remains in the receiving address as of Friday.