$8.5 Billion in Dormant Bitcoin Shifts as BCH Transaction Sparks Private Key Speculation

Eight long-inactive bitcoin wallets, untouched since 2011, unexpectedly roared back to life on Friday, each moving 10,000 BTC to fresh SegWit addresses. This marks the first activity from these wallets in over 14 years, dating back to the so-called “Satoshi era” of Bitcoin.

In total, these transfers accounted for roughly $8.5 billion and happened around the same time as a significant Bitcoin Cash (BCH) transaction. Earlier that day, someone moved more than 10,000 BCH—worth nearly $5 million at a price of $495.60—fueling curiosity about a potential link between the two events.

The BCH transaction caught the attention of Conor Grogan, a director at Coinbase, who suggested it might have been a cautious test of old private keys before shifting the massive bitcoin sums.

“There’s a chance the owner was checking the private key in a way that wouldn’t be noticed,” Grogan explained on X. “BCH doesn’t attract much attention from whale-tracking services.”

So far, none of the eight reactivated BTC wallets have been tied to specific individuals or entities. However, the scale and timing of the movements have sparked lively debate among blockchain analysts.

Grogan noted that only a single BCH address connected to the BTC wallet cluster was involved in the test transaction. He questioned why the other addresses stayed untouched, speculating that the wallet holder might lack full access to all the associated private keys:

“Why not sweep the others?” Grogan wondered. “It suggests whoever’s behind this might not control all the keys.”

The first large bitcoin transfer occurred roughly an hour after the BCH transaction, making this the biggest known movement of Satoshi-era bitcoins so far.

Currently, the newly funded BTC addresses haven’t sent the coins anywhere else or deposited them on exchanges. Still, the BCH transaction implies someone may have been testing access discreetly, hoping to avoid triggering alerts from whale-watching systems or market participants.

Speculation around these movements ranges from old private keys being compromised to possible advances in quantum computing.

Bitcoin’s early wallets, especially those using Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK) addresses, reveal their public keys the first time coins are moved. Once exposed, these keys could theoretically be vulnerable to quantum computing attacks, such as those exploiting Shor’s algorithm, should scalable quantum computers emerge in the future.

Conversely, dormant wallets that have never revealed their public keys remain secure even if quantum threats become real, as there’s no public key for attackers to reverse-engineer.

The fact that only one BCH wallet was used for testing while others stayed idle suggests that whoever’s behind this dramatic movement might have incomplete access to the private keys, leaving many mysteries around the true circumstances of these significant bitcoin transactions.

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