Dormant Bitcoin Wallet from 2011 Awakens, Transfers 100 BTC Worth 48.5 Million

On Sunday, a wallet that had been inactive for nearly 14 years was reactivated, executing a transaction of 100 BTC — a significant amount from 2011 now worth 8.5 million dollars. Bitcoin has not operated for 14 years moving to modern P2SH addresses. At block height 889,103, a dormant Pay-to-Public-Key-Hash wallet (P2PKH) has come back to life, moving 100 BTC —currently worth 8.5 million dollars— to four separate Pay-to-Script-Hash addresses (P2SH). The old wallet, identified as "12znK," was created for the first time on August 2, 2011, about 13 years and seven months ago.

The new wallets currently hold 24.99 BTC after the transfer. 100 bitcoin cash ( BCH ) linked—worth 32,460 dollars—is still inactive. Although it first became active on August 2, 2011, the 12znK wallet initially only received 1 BTC during its creation. Nearly two weeks later, on August 14, 2011, an additional 99 BTC poured into the address. At the time of the first deposit, the value of bitcoin fluctuated around $13.09 per unit, although it had dropped to about $10.13 per BTC by the second transaction. In total, the amount held in the wallet then reached $1,015.96, a figure that dropped to $425 on December 31, 2011, as prices fluctuated. In the following years, the accumulated BTC has yielded an astonishing investment return of 836,493%.

According to Blockchair's privacy assessment tool, the recent money transfer transaction has been rated a privacy score of 50/100, penalized for having a transaction structure that is scanned and for the frequent use of identical input addresses. Although Bitcoin wallets that have not been active since 2009 remain the Holy Grail for detectives tracking old transactions on the chain, wallets from 2010, 2011, and even 2012 are becoming increasingly scarce in the modern market.