Bitcoin Wallet Dormant Since 2013 Moves $31 Million Amid Coldcard Security Crisis

A Bitcoin wallet that had been inactive for over 12 years transferred 500 BTC — worth approximately $31.3 million — on Monday, as a widening security crisis surrounding Coldcard hardware wallets continued to unfold.

The wallet, labeled 18TExP by on-chain trackers, had remained dormant since 2013. The transaction was first flagged by Whale Alert. When the coins were last moved 12.7 years ago, they were worth roughly $500,000.

The reactivation occurred in the middle of an unfolding security crisis involving Coldcard, a popular Bitcoin-only hardware wallet manufactured by Toronto-based Coinkite. Coldcard devices, like other hardware wallets, are designed to generate and store private keys offline — a model widely regarded as one of the most secure approaches to self-custody, where users control their own private keys rather than entrusting them to a third-party exchange. Since July 30, however, attackers have drained thousands of BTC from Coldcard-generated wallets by exploiting a vulnerability that dates back to March 2021. According to researchers at Galaxy, total losses are estimated at approximately $130 million in BTC.

"Wallet 18TExP, holding 500 BTC ($31.27M), transferred all 500 BTC to a new wallet 1 hour ago after over 12 years of inactivity. The owner may have moved the funds to a new wallet due to security concerns following the Coldcard hack," blockchain analytics account Lookonchain said on X.

The movement of coins from one wallet to another does not, by itself, indicate anything beyond the fact that a holder with a decade-old private key chose to act. However, the timing has drawn attention given the ongoing Coldcard incident.

Over the weekend, some analysts noted increased inflows of BTC onto exchanges, as the hack dented confidence in self-custody safety — a notable reversal for a segment of the Bitcoin community that has long promoted personal key management as safer than leaving funds on centralized platforms.

Broader Spike in Old-Coin Movement

The 500 BTC transfer was not an isolated event. On-chain data from CryptoQuant, which tracks so-called spent output age bands — an indicator that groups all bitcoin moved on a given day by how long each coin had been dormant — reveals a clear spike in old-coin movement within the same window.

Coins dormant for 10 years or longer saw approximately 935 BTC move on Aug. 3, the largest single-day total since March 20. Separately, coins dormant for five to seven years saw a much larger spike, with roughly 6,388 BTC moving on July 31.

Long-dormant coins can move for a variety of reasons unrelated to any single security incident, including estate transfers, exchange consolidations, and custodial migrations. However, the clustering of large, long-dormant transfers in the days immediately following the Coldcard incident suggests holders may have been proactively migrating funds for security purposes.

Bitcoin (BTC) was trading at approximately $64,143 at the time of reporting.