Bitcoin Wallet Moves 600 BTC After 16-Year Dormancy [2026]

A wallet cluster that had not moved a single satoshi since Bitcoin’s earliest days woke up on September 5, 2026. Twelve addresses holding mining rewards from March 2010 sent a combined 600 BTC into two new wallets, ending roughly 16 years of total inactivity. Cointelegraph, Bitcoin.com News, CryptoRank, and several other outlets confirmed the transfer within hours, and blockchain forensics firm Whale Alert stepped in to answer the question every crypto trader asks the moment old coins move: is this Satoshi Nakamoto?

The short answer, according to Whale Alert’s own research, is no. But the 600 BTC event still matters, and not just because of the roughly $48 million price tag attached to it. It’s a case study in how blockchain analytics has evolved, how dormant Bitcoin supply gets tracked in real time, and why coins mined in Bitcoin’s infancy carry a different kind of scrutiny than anything moved today.

What Happened: 600 BTC Moves After 16 Years of Dormancy

The transfer involved 12 distinct addresses, each holding a 50 BTC block reward from the coinbase-subsidy era of 2010, when miners earned 50 BTC per block instead of today’s fractional reward. Bitcoin.com News reported that the outbound transfers confirmed across block heights 965639 through 965646, moving the full 600 BTC out of wallets that had sat untouched since they were mined. Lookonchain’s on-chain feed flagged the same movement within minutes, describing it as 12 Bitcoin addresses dormant for over 16 years that moved a combined 600 BTC on September 5.