Dormant Bitcoin Addresses Emerge with $60 Million Jackpot

Recently, two dormant Bitcoin accounts sprung to life, the first of which had been active for over a decade. Each address, marked with “16vRqA” and “1DUJuH,” had a large sum of 500 BTC. The incredible upturn in the popularity of these purses after a long period caused a sensation, sparking memories of the amazing results that followed their first usage. 

 Bitcoin wallets awaken, hence big earnings

The BTC addresses became inactive approximately 10 years ago. In contrast to conventional wisdom, which claimed that one needed to stay in the cryptocurrency coins for a long time to achieve impressive profits, the extraordinary success of the so-called long-term “holders” became evident only 7 years later. 

The first address held 500 BTC when they were created, as stated in the message (its value was roughly $62,000 converted from the then exchange rate of $124). What a change in the valuation of each wallet, from $30,494,084 now—that is a 47,873% increase. 

2 wallets that have been dormant for 10.7 years transferred all 1,000 $BTC($60.9M) out in the past 20 mins.

Wallet"16vRqA" received 500 $BTC($62K at that time) on Sept 13, 2013, when the price was $124.

Wallet"1DUJuH" received 500 $BTC($62K at that time) on Sept 12, 2013, when… pic.twitter.com/l5ivjrcRt5

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) May 12, 2024

The fact of a few forgotten doomed BTC addresses points to the ever-changing landscape of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin initially regarded as an asset that was only interesting to tech people, has now become a mainstream asset. Cryptocurrency has come a long way from having been chosen for the sole purpose of being speculative to proceeding into a highly backed store of value, which has attracted the attention of many institutional investors and current traders.

Bitcoin’s price surge brings investor interest

BTC’s phenomenon of setting one new record after another, with a peak above $73,000 at the beginning of November, has brought investors’ attention back to cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin.

Source: Coinmarketcap

The increase in Bitcoin’s price has caused some dormant addresses to wake up as holders take advantage of the market conditions to liquidate or diversify their holdings. 

Apart from the price increase, Bitcoin’s utility is growing. Its work can be used to make the network support active contracts or even implement decentralized applications. Innovations like the Runes Protocol brought to life during the previous halving have expressed Bitcoin’s capability to advance and introduce new useful functionality and elasticity.