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.
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.
