Sleeping beauty bitcoin wallets wake up after 14 years to the tune of $2 billion

Attendees pose for photos in front of a sign at The Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada in May. The bitcoin world was abuzz on Friday after news a pair of dormant accounts woke up after 14 years. - Ethan Miller/Getty Images The bitcoin community was buzzing on Friday after two massive bitcoin wallets were activated after 14 years of silence, to the tune of more than $2 billion in potential profit.

Lookonchain and Whale Alert, which each track major blockchain transactions, both flagged that 20,000 in bitcoin had been moved. Untouched up to now, the 10,000 bitcoin in each wallet had originally been deposited in 2011. As bitcoin BTCUSD was worth just 78 cents at the time and currently stands at $108,868, the value of those two wallets is now over $1.09 billion each.

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According to BitInfo Charts, 18.04 million bitcoin sits in dormant accounts. Sizable inactive accounts that wake up after years of dormancy draw investor attention because of the potential market impact if those coins are sold.

And this year seems to be a busy one. Onchain School, which provides blockchain analysis, reported earlier this year that long-dormant bitcoin moving in the first three months of 2025 was more than double the same period in 2024.

“On-chain data reveals that 62,800 $BTC aged over 7 years were spent between January and March 2025, versus 28,000 $BTC during Q1 2024 — marking a 121% increase in the movement of old coins,” it reported on the CryptoQuant platform.

Thus far, it’s not clear that the wallet owners have any intentions beyond shifting the 20,000 bitcoin, though the industry will be undoubtedly monitoring closely. That would mean that for now, they remain cryptocurrency HODLers, or those who believe in the long-term potential of bitcoin and other digital assets.

Caroline Bowler, chief executive officer at Melbourne-based BTC Markets told MarketWatch that in the early days of bitcoin there was lots of conviction around HODLing bitcoin, so it’s not too out of character to find evidence of investors buying and holding for so long.

“What is remarkable is the amount of self-control that it would have taken through all these market cycles to sit on it for that long,” Bowler said in a point others were making as well.

Story ContinuesShould the owners decide to sell such a sum, that’s “absolutely going to move the market,” Bowler said, though adding it’s unlikely that would be done one chunk and probably sold off the market as much as possible.

“Even then you’re talking about a lot of OTC [over the counter] activity to absorb 10,000. But it seems very unlikely that someone would dump 10,000 onto the market in one trade or in equivalents cross the week,” she said.

Bowler said there are a number of “dormant wallets out there with significant holdings of bitcoin that are unlikely to ever be activated because people have lost the access to it. And that’s what makes it particularly of interest within the bitcoin community when you see one of these things like back up again.”

Tom Lee head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors has predicted bitcoin could finish 2025 at $250,000, though his base case remains $150,000. Lee said as “95% of the world doesn’t own bitcoin,” there’s a huge supply/demand imbalance with more potential buyers in the next 10 years, in an interview with CNBC last month.

Bitcoin’s price has gained 16% this year, hitting a new record above $110,000 in May, largely driven by momentum, with record inflows into bitcoin ETFs in May.

Read: You can now buy this lesser-known crypto in a traditional brokerage account. Here are the risks.

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