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A wallet holding 4,581.94 BTC transferred its entire balance to 5 new addresses on October 12, which was worth approximately 377 million US dollars at that time, with a single transaction fee of only 732 sats.

These bitcoins entered this wallet in March 2020, with a value of approximately $40.5 million at that time.

Since 2020, this address has received a total of 22 transactions. Among them, on January 28, 2025, there was a transfer of 600 sats from an address that "looks similar" to the original wallet address; this transferred amount shares the same first three and last four characters with the original wallet address.

According to on-chain data, a wallet that has been holding 4,581.94 BTC tokens since March 2020 transferred the entire balance to 5 new addresses on October 12, with a single transfer amount of approximately $377 million. The transaction was confirmed in block 971,126, around UTC 18:37, at which time the Bitcoin trading price was about $82,350.

Four of the recipient addresses each received 1,000 BTC, while the fifth address received 581.94 BTC. This transaction incurred a fee of 732 satoshis; sats is one billionth of a Bitcoin unit, which is approximately equivalent to 60 cents. As of block 971,279 on October 13th, none of these five addresses had utilized any of the funds yet. It is currently unclear who controls these wallets or where these Bitcoins will be directed.

On March 3, 2020, this wallet received these bitcoins. At that time, a balance of 5,081.95 BTC was split into three parts, with 250 BTC being transferred to two other addresses respectively. Calculated at around $8,830 per bitcoin at that time, the 4,581.95 BTC that flowed into this wallet were worth approximately $40.5 million. Since then, the value of bitcoin has almost increased by ten times.

This wallet also embodies the power of “patience.” Since these bitcoins were added to the wallet, they have experienced several market shocks, first with the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, which occurred not long after the wallet received new funds. During that period, the value of this holdings dropped from approximately $40.5 million to about $17.6 million.

In May 2021, Tesla suspended accepting Bitcoin payments, and China strengthened regulations on mining, causing the value of this wallet to drop from a peak of approximately $291 million in April to $131 million in June. The collapses in Terra, Celsius, and FTX in 2022 pushed its value down to around $71 million; compared to the peak in November 2021, there was a loss of about $239 million. At the same time, the Federal Reserve's interest rate hikes also dragged down the S&P 500 index by about 25%, and Bitcoin fell to a two-year low.

Trump's tariff measures also caused a significant slump in the market. Bitcoin subsequently fell by 54% from a record high of $124,728 to $57,735 before rebounding to its current price. During this decline, the value of that wallet dropped from $571.5 million to about $265 million. However, overall, long-term holding of the coin has still resulted in a nearly 10-fold net profit since the initial purchase.

This address also received dust transfers, which are small transactions with amounts ranging from just a few hundred to a few thousand sats, and the sending costs are virtually negligible. On-chain data shows that from August 2020 to May 2026, there were a total of 22 such deposits, with amounts ranging from 546 sats to 6,953 sats. Calculated at current prices, each transaction was less than 6 US dollars. Among these, 16 transactions were part of batch transfers, which distributed funds to 87 to 610 addresses at once.

One of the deposits matched the "address poisoning" pattern: The attacker generated an address that copied the first and last characters of a real address, hoping that the victim would mistakenly use it when copying addresses from transaction records in the future. On January 28, 2025, an address starting with 18VpNbPc and ending with pQ9x sent 600 sats to that wallet, which had the same first three and last four characters as that of the whale account.

This “similar-looking” address was funded by a transaction on November 12, 2024, which distributed funds to 1,401 recipients at once. After making this payment, the address was immediately emptied. All other senders used the address bc1, which is completely different from the wallet’s traditional addresses that start with 18.

This giant whale didn't fall for it.

Large holders of Bitcoin are commonly referred to as "whales," and their reasons for transferring coins vary, including concerns about privacy and security. Analysts and traders are concerned that such actions often indicate a sale, as holders may be tempted to realize substantial profits.

However, this is not the first time that a dormant wallet has transferred funds. As early as July 2025, an entity transferred 80,000 BTC coins. These coins have been dormant for 14 years and are worth $8.6 billion, representing the largest single-day transfer of assets that are over 10 years old at that time. Ten days later, a wallet from the Satoshi Nakamoto era sent 40,009 BTC coins to Galaxy, amounting to approximately $4.7 billion; subsequently, Galaxy stated that it executed a sale transaction worth about $9 billion on behalf of a customer from the Satoshi Nakamoto era.

As of October 13th, the original address still held 23,288 sats, which is approximately equivalent to 19 US dollars, while those 5 recipient addresses held a total of 4,581.94 BTC.