On-chain data shows that an ancient Ethereum wallet containing 2,000 ETH has suddenly come back to life after being inactive for nearly 11 years.
Ethereum and wallets go from $620 to $4.2 million
According to data from crypto transaction tracking service Whale Alert, an old Ethereum wallet has just broken out of its 10.8-year hiatus. The address in question held a total of 2,000 ETH, worth $620 in 2015.
This wallet is so old that Whale Alert classifies it as a pre-mined address. In the context of ETH, a “pre-mining address” refers to an address that received tokens before mining began on the network following the public launch in 2015. Such wallets were assigned these coins. This is because these wallets belonged to early contributors and participants in the 2014 presale.
Interestingly, this particular investor, despite getting into crypto early on, has not participated in any activity at all, and his only transaction in over a decade was a deposit received at the genesis of blockchain.
Well, my pre-main address suddenly came back. Below are the details related to the transaction that broke the wallet’s long dormancy.
Looks like the investor moved a small amount with this transfer | Source: Whale Alert
As you can see, this move only involved a total of 1 ETH, suggesting that it was likely a test trade. After this transfer, the wallet performed several more transactions, including a shift of 1,997.9 ETH, which almost completely emptied the balance. So far, these coins are not circulating on centralized exchanges, so it is difficult to determine whether investors are looking to sell them.
As mentioned earlier, the value of the Ethereum stack held by this address was only $620 in 2015. That same amount now translates to more than $4.2 million, a gain of approximately 630,000%.
What is the reason for OG’s sudden return? Well, the answer lies in what happened after the wallet went silent. Addresses this old often become obsolete not through a determined HODL, but through being lost or forgotten. Therefore, it is possible that this address was simply inaccessible while it was dormant and the key was recently rediscovered.
A less likely, but not impossible, scenario is that Ethereum balances actually reach that age due to long-term holding. If so, this investor would be one of the most robust diamonds in the digital asset space.
ETH price
Ethereum fell towards the $2,000 level a few days ago, but the cryptocurrency has managed to rebound with the price currently trading around $2,130.
The price of the coin seems to have overall been following a sideways trajectory in recent days | Source: ETHUSDT on TradingView
Featured image from Dall-E, chart from TradingView.com
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