Dormant Bitcoin Wallets Shift $9B as BTC Eyes $110K

Last week, the crypto community watched the sudden transfer of 80,000 BTC worth close to $9 billion. Those funds were moved from eight ancient wallets, last active in the Satoshi Nakamoto era. They had remained dormant for 14 years since Bitcoin was trading lower than $3.

Each of those eight wallets initially moved 10,000 BTC worth slightly more than $1 billion received back in 2011. Aside from those Satoshi-era wallets, several other whales, which remained dormant for a much shorter time, also returned from hibernation and moved substantial amounts of Bitcoin. Despite numerous explanations offered by various experts, these staggering Bitcoin movements still raise eyebrows of many average crypto enthusiasts who are sharing their views on social media – X, Reddit, Telegram, etc.

Key Takeaways

• 80,000 BTC (~$9B) moved from 8 dormant wallets inactive since 2011 (Satoshi era).
• The move followed a legal threat message claiming the wallets would be seized if owners didn’t prove control.
• Ledger CTO believes it wasn’t a hack but a reaction to the message; some suspect Roger Ver or a cover for illicit funds.
• Over the past year, 500,000 dormant BTC (~$50B) have been reactivated and absorbed by ETFs and institutions.
• Institutions now control ~25% of BTC’s circulating supply, according to 10x Research.
• Despite the huge movement, BTC price barely reacted, briefly touching ~$109,700.
• ETFs and treasuries now drive the market, not whales.
• Samson Mow predicts governments will soon buy BTC via sovereign debt, pushing toward hyperbitcoinization and $1M BTC.

Ledger CTO shares details of mammoth BTC transfers

On Monday, Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet published a tweet in which he shed some light on this remarkable event. He said that an unknown entity had sent a message to the 8 aforesaid wallets. That message demanded proof from the owners that those wallets were not abandoned. Otherwise, it warned that the Bitcoin contained in them will be taken over.

This message included these lines: “LEGAL NOTICE: We have taken possession of this wallet and its contents” – “Not abandoned? Prove it by an on-chain transaction using the private key by Sept 30.”

The message allegedly came from a website of a legal firm “Solomon Brothers”: “The owner is provided ninety (90) days to respond to this Notice. In other words, an owner with valid proof of ownership must respond before October 5, 2025. If no response is received, the digital wallets and their contents, will be considered to be confirmed as abandoned.”

Guillemet does not believe that those eight wallets were hacked since the aforementioned message was sent to other dormant wallets as well, many of them containing large amounts of BTC. What happened with those eight wallets is that the owner(s) saw that “legal notice message” and decided to move their Bitcoins to a safer location. Some in the Bitcoin community shared an assumption that the person who moved those 80,000 BTC was none other than former “Bitcoin Jesus”, an early Bitcoin adopter, who later switched to support Bitcoin Cash, Roger Ver.

Another version proposed by Guillemet is the following:

“Some of these addresses might have a dubious origin, and someone is trying to fabricate a narrative of hacking to avoid proving the legitimate source of the funds.”

This week, two more wallets, which had stayed inactive for six years, moved 6,000 BTC worth roughly $59 million each.

However, Bloomberg has revealed that over the past year, dormant wallets have unloaded a whopping 500,000 BTC valued at more than $50 billion. This is the amount close to the giant Bitcoin stash held by Michael Saylor’s Strategy accumulated during the past 4.5 years. This company now holds almost 600,000 BTC.

However, these 500,000 Bitcoins were quickly absorbed by Bitcoin ETFs, Bitcoin treasury companies, like Strategy and Metaplanet, as well as other institutional investors.

10x Research, cited by Bloomberg, says that over the past year, the above-mentioned entities have consumed around 900,000 Bitcoins. According to Bloomberg, these entities now hold about a quarter of all the circulating Bitcoin supply under their control.

Bitcoin is testing $110,000

Meanwhile, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, continues pushing towards $110,000. Over the weekend, the market reacted to the 80,000 BTC transfers almost indifferently by adding merely 2% and going from $107,500 to the $109,700 level. Overall, this week so far, Bitcoin has been striving to overcome the $109,170 resistance and break through the $110,000 line. On Wednesday, it managed to briefly top $109,700 in a bold move once again before it was pushed back to $109,160.

As it turned out, the market dynamics have not been very much affected by the aforementioned move of 500,000 Bitcoins. A few years ago, such a staggering Bitcoin amount dumped on the market would have crashed the BTC price. These days, the price is rather driven by ETFs and treasury companies accumulating every Bitcoin within their reach and issuing debt to buy more.

All these dormant coins have been quickly swallowed by those financial institutions that are looking into the future with the hope of profiting from long-term Bitcoin investment or hoping that BTC will become the basis for the global economy in the future, according to Michael Saylor’s numerous predictions.

In the meantime, the JAN3 CEO, Samson Mow, expects that soon, it will not only be treasury companies that will be buying Bitcoin. He has predicted that governments will begin issuing sovereign debt to raise funds and accumulate Bitcoin reserves, following the example of Strategy. Some of them have been mining BTC already, such as Bhutan. This will create a global hyperbitcoinization, he believes, and will bring Bitcoin to $1 million.