Bitcoin wallets that have sat untouched since the cryptocurrency traded for just a few dollars continue to wake up.

Six wallets last active between 2011 and 2014 moved a combined 553.59 BTC, worth roughly $40 million, between Aug. 16 and Aug. 26, according to data tracked by Galaxy Research. One of them had not moved a single coin in more than 15 years.

Transactions of this kind often reignite concerns that bitcoin's earliest holders are finally cashing out. The broader data, however, points the other way: the amount of dormant bitcoin moving onchain fell in the second quarter to its lowest level since the third quarter of 2022, according to Alex Thorn, head of firmwide research at Galaxy Digital. Galaxy classifies a coin as dormant when it has remained at the same address for at least a year.

The slowdown follows two unusually busy years. Old bitcoin moved in 2024 and 2025 at levels rivaled only by the 2017 bull market, when early holders sitting on enormous gains began spending or relocating their coins. Galaxy described that period as a "great distribution" and said 2026 is on pace to see less than half as much dormant bitcoin move as last year.

Movement does not necessarily mean selling. Bitcoin's public blockchain shows coins leaving one address and arriving at another, but it usually cannot reveal whether the owner sold, switched wallets, transferred holdings to a custodian, or simply reorganized their positions. That limitation is why analysts distinguish between coins moving to exchange-linked addresses — where they can typically be traded — and transfers to private wallets or custody providers, which may simply reflect security or estate management.

Five of the six decade-old wallets this month sent their bitcoin to addresses with no known links to exchanges. The sixth moved 40 BTC to Boerse Stuttgart Digital, a German crypto custody and trading provider.

Two of the six wallets carry labels tying them to a New York lawsuit in which a pseudonymous plaintiff known as Noah Doe is seeking control of bitcoin held across 39,069 dormant addresses under the state's lost-property laws. The plaintiffs sent tiny amounts of bitcoin to those addresses along with onchain legal notices, arguing that the coins could be treated as abandoned property if no one established ownership. CoinDesk reported in June that one address named in the case moved 35.55 BTC after remaining untouched since March 2011 — one of the first visible responses from a wallet targeted in the lawsuit.

Separately, after a flaw in certain Coldcard hardware wallets was disclosed in late July, roughly 210,000 BTC left wallets classified by Glassnode as belonging to long-term holders in a single week. The vulnerability made poorly generated wallet keys easier for attackers to guess, prompting some users to move bitcoin into newly created wallets or regulated custody even when their own coins were not directly exposed.

Source: CoinDesk