On-chain data shows that an old Ethereum wallet containing 2,000 ETH, dormant for almost 11 years, has suddenly come back to life.
Ethereum OG wallet turned $620 into $4.2 million
According to data from cryptocurrency transaction tracking service Whale Alert, an old Ethereum wallet just broke a 10.8-year dormancy phase. The address in question held a total of 2,000 ETH, worth $620 in 2015.
The wallet is so old that Whale Alert classifies it as a pre-mining address. In the context of ETH, a “pre-mining address” refers to an address that received its tokens before mining began on the network with its public launch in 2015. Such wallets were assigned these coins because they belonged to the first contributors and participants in the pre-sale in 2014.
Interestingly, although he got into cryptocurrency early on, this investor simply never participated in the business, with his only transaction in over 10 years being the deposit he received during the genesis of the blockchain.
Today, the address before the mine was suddenly reactivated. Below are the details related to the transaction that ended the wallet’s long dormancy period.
Looks like the investor moved a small amount with this transfer | Source: Whale Alert
As can be seen, the move involved a sum of just 1 ETH, suggesting that it was likely a test transaction. After this transfer, the wallet made a few more transactions, including a transfer of 1,997.9 ETH that almost completely emptied its balance. So far, these coins have not made it to a centralized exchange, so it is difficult to tell if the investor is looking to sell them.
As mentioned earlier, the Ethereum stack held by the address was worth just $620 in 2015. Today, the same amount converts to over $4.2 million, representing a gain of almost 630,000%.
What could be the reason why the OG is making a sudden comeback? Well, the answer to that question would lie in what happened to the wallet after it went silent. Often, addresses this old reach their age not through resolved HODLing, but by being lost or forgotten. As such, it is possible that this address was simply inaccessible during its dormancy and its keys were recently rediscovered.
A less likely, but not impossible, scenario is that the Ethereum balance has actually reached its age through long-term holding. If so, the investor would be one of the most loyal diamonds in the digital asset sector.
ETH Price
Ethereum fell all the way to the $2,000 level a few days ago, but the cryptocurrency managed to climb back up as its price is now 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 of Dall-E, chart from TradingView.com
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