15-Year-Old Bitcoin Wallets Suddenly Awake, Moving $15.8M

Between block height 862,079 and 862,087, a group of five vintage bitcoin wallets from 2009 came out of hibernation, spending a total of 250 BTC

Five P2PKH Addresses From the Satoshi Era Transferred 250 BTC for the First Time in 15 Years

Five legacy wallets, known as P2PKH (Pay to Public Key Hash) addresses, transferred 250 BTC from wallets created between Jan. 29 and Feb. 2, 2009. This marks the first time that BTC minted in 2009 has moved since April 2022.

The funds originated from wallets created less than a month after Satoshi Nakamoto launched the Bitcoin network. All the transfers came from addresses born on Jan. 29, Jan. 30, Jan. 31 (twice), and Feb. 2, 2009. The movements were flagged by btcparser.com, and each transaction was sent from the legacy P2PKH wallets to fresh Segwit addresses.

As of 6 a.m. EDT on Sept. 20, the funds still rest in their new Segwit addresses. Each transaction received a moderate privacy score and was executed using the “send everything” option. Interestingly, the corresponding bitcoin cash (BCH) tied to these BTC transfers remains untouched in legacy BCH addresses. The five transactions originated from block rewards tied to blocks 2,247, 2,401, 2,455, 2,486, and 2,690.

The 250 BTC moved on Friday is valued at $15.8 million at current exchange rates. Movements of 2009-era BTC are extremely rare, with the last one being on April 7-8, 2022, when 250 BTC was spent. That batch of transactions was from block rewards 27,693, 27,694, 27,742, 27,749, and 27,811. Before that, a single block reward, block height 27,484, was spent 1.10 years prior. Going even further back, a group of December 2009 wallets moved funds on Jan. 5, 2018.