Recently, the earliest Ethereum wallets have begun to move again after years of inactivity. In July and August 2026, several Genesis wallets moved millions of dollars worth of ETH▲$1,761.17.
Onchain activity by a dormant Ethereum Genesis era wallet, which had not been active for more than 11 years and now contained 2,680 ETH worth about $5.03 million, was reported to onchain observers on August 11. In current-day dollars, the value of those same assets in that wallet is about $830, yielding a more than 605,000% return.
Genesis ETH refers to coins held by the earliest users of Ethereum, that is, ether allocated during the 2014 crowdsale and activated upon launch. The early buyers had acquired ETH at a price far below the current market, and thus transfers of these coins attracted attention because of the huge unrealized profits made over the past decade.
The Aug. 11 transfer was not the only one tracked by Whale Alert: on Aug. 8, 2,000 ETH, worth $3.8 million, was transferred from one of the early holders. Nonetheless, according to the tracker data, they had a value of only about $620 at the time. According to Arkham Intelligence data, the funds then went to Coinbase, placing at least some of the recently reactivated supply on a centralized exchange.
Ethereum started with 72 million ETH created. Most of these coins (around 60 million) were sold to crowdsale participants in an initial public crowdsale over 42 days beginning in 2014.
