Bitcoin Whale Moves $377.6 Million After Years of Silence
The coins came in right before the Covid crash and are now worth almost nine times more. Onchain analysts often track these old wallets for possible market impact.
Key Takeaways
- A Bitcoin whale moved about 4,582 BTC on Monday, worth $377.6 million, to five new addresses.
- The coins had been untouched since March 3, 2020, and were worth about $40.8 million at the time.
- It is unclear why the transfer happened; large moves can also be a security measure.
A Bitcoin whale that received its coins right before the March 2020 Covid crash moved $377.6 million (€338 million) in BTC. The wallet had held the coins for years and sent about 4,582 BTC to five new addresses on Monday, according to blockchain data from Arkham and mempool.space.
Large Transfer on the Blockchain
Four of the receiving addresses got exactly 1,000 BTC each. The fifth address received about 582 BTC. At the time of writing, none of those five addresses had moved the coins any further.
The coins arrived on March 3, 2020, in wallet 18VmXvkF4cgLi35RtMiHHDpvMjUCyVpQ9x, coming from address 17VX1BEjYVyBMi2vw6nXDrpwMvCSweHZot. Nine days later, Covid panic hit and Bitcoin dropped more than 40% to below $4,000 (€3,580). Since then, that level has not been seen again.
When the coins came in, they were worth about $40.8 million (€36.5 million). By Monday's transfer, that value had grown to almost nine times as much.
Signal for the Market
The wallet did not send anything out for more than four years. The first outgoing transaction did not come until August 2024 and involved just 0.009 BTC, after which the rest went back to the same wallet.
Onchain analysts often watch this kind of movement from old wallets. A commonly used metric is Coin Days Destroyed, or CDD. It does not just count how much BTC is moved, but also how long those coins have been sitting still. The older the coins, the more weight the move carries. Historically, spikes in CDD have often shown up around periods of heavy volatility or a trend reversal.
That does not automatically mean the owner wants to sell. Large transfers can also just be a security measure, for example to move coins to other addresses owned by the same person. It is still unclear what the goal of this latest move was.
More Attention on Old Wallets
For European crypto readers, this is especially relevant because big moves from long-dormant Bitcoin wallets are often quickly picked up by traders and analysts. These transfers do not directly say anything about price, but they can draw extra attention to market structure and the behavior of long-term holders.
That makes this kind of onchain data useful as context alongside price action itself. Especially with Bitcoin, old wallets and large transfers remain one of the signals the market watches closely.
