Another dormant Ethereum wallet reawakens after 8 years, moving millions

An Ether (ETH) wallet that has been inactive in 2015 has suddenly awoken after eight years of dormancy, moving a total of 8,000 ETH in just two minutes.

The wallet received 8,000 ETH after participating in Ethereum’s ICO (initial coin offering) in 2015 and remained inactive until May 27. On that day, its owner began with a cautionary transfer of 1 ETH to a new wallet. One minute later, they transferred the remaining 7,999 ETH to the new wallet address.

At the time of writing, the ETH stash is worth approximately $14.7 million.

This transaction was first noticed by blockchain analytics service Lookonchain, which informed its 219,000 Twitter followers of the transfer.

An Ethereum ICO participant who has been dormant for 8 years woke up today.

He transferred all 8000 $ETH($14.7M) to a new address.https://t.co/1griKB9Te9 pic.twitter.com/1bvQh3zsqY

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) May 28, 2023

In the comments section of the post, there was some community speculation around the reason for the transfer. One commenter suggested that the owner had just been released from prison, while another made a humorous remark that they were transferring funds from an old Ledger — a pointed comment about the company’s controversial new Recover upgrade.

At the time, the 8,000 ETH was purchased at a price of just $0.31 per token, which places the initial investment amount at around $2,500.

At today’s prices of $1,917, this marks a staggering 590,000% gain for the owner.

This isn’t the only ICO-era Ether wallet to re-awaken in recent months. On April 24, another wallet that received 2,365 ETH ($4.5 million) made its first transaction in nearly eight years, with the owner transferring 2,360 ETH to a new wallet address.

On March 5, another ETH wallet transferred 10,226 ETH ($19.6 million) out to new wallet address after remaining dormant for five years.

The new wallet address is also one with little in the way of any significant transaction history. The only other ETH transaction recorded in the new wallet is a 207 ETH ($380,000) incoming transaction that was made just a few minutes prior to the most recent transfer. Notably, the additional 207 ETH were sent from another wallet that had remained completely inactive since June 12, 2017.

Related: Arbitrum-based Jimbos Protocol hacked, losing $7.5M in Ether

Interestingly, the new wallet also contains $46 worth of a memecoin called Gensler (GENSLR), and just $0.24 worth of a dragon-inspired token called Dejitaru Tsuka (TSUKA), according to data from Web3 wallet tracker DeBank.

The Ethereum ICO occurred raised $18 million in two stages between July and September of 2014. The going exchange rate for the pre-sale was 1 Bitcoin for 2,000 ETH. The Ethereum blockchain was not launched until July 30, 2015, meaning that investors had to wait for more than a year to be able to redeem and use their Ether.

Dormant wallets with vast sums of crypto can awaken for a variety of reasons. Sometimes dormant wallets reawaken because they’ve been hacked. Other times, it’s simply because the owner may have forgotten about it and upon its re-discovery, have decided that it’s possibly a good time to sell.

Crypto City: Guide to Osaka, Japan’s second-biggest city