Twelve bitcoin wallets dormant since March 2010 moved 600 BTC on Saturday. That is about $48 million. Whale Alert called it the largest synchronized awakening of mining-era coins in years.
These transfers landed within days of another cluster. At least four other decade-old wallets shifted a combined 202.84 BTC between Aug. 29 and Sept. 4, roughly $15.7 million, per Galaxy Research counts of on-chain activity. One tranche went to Coinbase. The bursts have revived a question that surfaces every cycle: are early holders cashing out, and why now?
All 12 mining-era rewards trace back to Bitcoin blocks mined in March 2010, Whale Alert found. Each block paid a 50 BTC subsidy then. That payout has since been halved four times, most recently to 3.125 BTC in April 2024. One address received its 50 BTC reward on March 5, 2010, and held it for more than 16 years. On Sept. 5, 2026, blockchain records show the coins moved to a new address.
“None of the blocks can be connected to Satoshi based on our research,” a Whale Alert spokesperson told Cointelegraph. The coins date to a period when Satoshi Nakamoto was still active on Bitcoin. Nakamoto’s last known communication dates to April 2011.
Lookonchain first flagged the activity. Seven miner wallets moved 350 BTC after 16.5 years of inactivity. Whale Alert later expanded the count to 12 rewards. One, the team noted, moved several blocks before the rest. That pattern fits a test transaction ahead of a larger batch.
The Galaxy batch offers a clearer picture of what these holders stand to gain. The largest wallet held 146.06 BTC, about $11.3 million, untouched since November 2013. Cost basis near $595. That is a gain of roughly 12,902%. A 40 BTC wallet dormant since November 2011 followed, now worth around $3.09 million. Galaxy traced the return through mempool data: roughly $120 in BTC became more than $3 million over close to 15 years. Two smaller wallets rounded out the group. Ten BTC idle since June 2011, worth about $777,000. And 6.78 BTC last active in February 2011, worth roughly $551,000.
Galaxy tagged that 6.78 BTC transfer with a Coinbase recipient address. Coins sent to an exchange typically signal intent to sell rather than re-custody. The remaining transfers in the batch carry no clear destination.
Several reawakened wallets carried “Noah Doe” sender tags. The name references a New York lawsuit seeking to have thousands of dormant addresses declared abandoned property. Wallets named in that case have stirred regularly since a judge paused the proceedings in June, Decrypt reported. Whether any of that connects to the 600 BTC mining-era batch is not established. Cointelegraph does not mention the case.
This is not the first wave. An earlier cluster saw six wallets move roughly $40 million in a 10-day stretch in August, per Decrypt. The pattern has extended through the summer. Why vintage holders are moving now remains unclear. Neither source specifies where the 600 BTC mining-era coins were sent, and the destinations of most of the Galaxy-tracked transfers are ambiguous.
What the chain does show is age and size. Coins mined in March 2010 sat through four halvings, three bull cycles, and the collapse of Mt. Gox before moving last week. Traders, as ever, disagree on what that signals.
