On the BTC blockchain, there are addresses that have not moved for many years. Some of them will probably not even move anymore, because they are probably irretrievably lost (their owners have lost their private keys). However, others simply “wait” for the right moment of sale.
One of the categories of addresses that for years thought it might never “revive” again significantly changed its balance sheet on Sunday, September 19, 2021. It contained 616 Bitcoins, valued at approximately $ 30 million. However, at the time these Bitcoins were credited to the address, they had a market value of only $ 8192. BTC sold for $ 13.30 on December 10, 2012, when it was sent to it.
💤💤 A dormant address containing 616 #BTC (29,470,042 USD) has just been activated after 8.8 years (worth 6,667 USD in 2012)!https://t.co/tr6lgToZPO
– Whale Alert (@whale_alert) September 19, 2021
This address is known to have been lost by its owner for some time. During the previous months, he had sent several small transactions from and to it. However, the entire balance was not collected until last weekend.
He withstood the high volatility of the BTC
The holder of 616 BTC is an example of a long-term winner who has been able to withstand the pressure of selling Bitcoins during two big bullruns since 2012. He did not move his 616 BTC until more than 9 years later, when BTC cost almost $ 50,000. Even in this case, however, it is not entirely certain whether he really sold them. They can only be moved to another address, which they also check.
How many BTCs are lost?
According to the Chainalysis platform, there are three to four million BTCs that are probably lost forever because their owners have lost access to them. The study is based on the assumption that new technologies were lost in the early years of existence, when primary users underestimated the secure storage of private keys. In the first four years of BTC production, 50 new BTCs were generated in each unit (7,200 BTCs per day, 2,628,000 BTCs per year), but BTC had virtually no or very low market price. At the same time, it was complicated to sell, because the exchanges we know today simply did not exist.
However, the activity of the wallet suggests that some of these BTCs may still “come to life” in the future – either by luck happens to find private keys or by being checked by convinced watchmakers who still do not have these BTCs for many years to come. intention to spend.
