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An Ethereum Wallet Comes Alive
A certain Ether wallet, untouched since 2015, has suddenly sprung into activity after eight long years, shifting a whopping 8,000 ETH within a short span of just two minutes.
This wallet, credited with 8,000 ETH for participating in Ethereum's initial coin offering (ICO) back in 2015, stayed untouched until May 27. Then, its owner cautiously moved 1 ETH into a new wallet. Barely a minute later, the remaining balance of 7,999 ETH was transferred to this new wallet address.
The present-day value of this Ethereum stash is estimated at a substantial $14.7 million.
Insights from Blockchain Analytics
Blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain was the first to spot this activity and promptly informed its Twitter follower base of 219,000 about this transfer.
In the comments following the post, the community speculated about the reasons for this transfer. A respondent joked that the owner must have just been released from jail. Another comment, doused in humor, suggested that the funds were being transferred from an old Ledger, hinting at the recent controversy surrounding the company's Recover upgrade.
When these 8,000 ETH were first purchased, each token cost a mere $0.31, indicating the initial investment would have been around $2,500.
Considering today's price of $1,917 per ETH, the owner is now looking at a monumental gain of 590,000%.
Other ICO-Era Ether Wallets Stirring
This isn't the only Ether wallet from the ICO era that has shown signs of life recently. On April 24, a wallet credited with 2,365 ETH ($4.5 million) made its first transaction in almost eight years, moving 2,360 ETH to a new wallet address.
Earlier on March 5, an ETH wallet that had been idle for five years, transferred 10,226 ETH ($19.6 million) to a fresh wallet address.
This new wallet address, too, doesn't boast of any significant transaction history. The sole ETH transaction on this wallet before the most recent transfer was a 207 ETH ($380,000) incoming transaction, merely a few minutes prior. This 207 ETH, intriguingly, came from another wallet that had been utterly idle since June 12, 2017.
Interestingly, the new wallet also holds a modest $46 worth of a memecoin named Gensler (GENSLR), and a minuscule $0.24 worth of a dragon-themed token named Dejitaru Tsuka (TSUKA), as per data from Web3 wallet tracker DeBank.
Ethereum's ICO, held between July and September of 2014 in two stages, gathered $18 million. The going rate at the pre-sale was 1 Bitcoin for 2,000 ETH. The Ethereum blockchain was not operational until July 30, 2015, meaning investors had to wait more than a year to redeem and utilize their Ether.
The awakening of dormant wallets holding massive amounts of crypto can occur due to numerous reasons. At times, these wallets are reactivated because they've been compromised. Other times, it could simply be because the owner has rediscovered an old stash and deemed it an opportune moment to sell.
