Bitcoin dormant since 2013 moves: 411 BTC shifted to a new address, none sent to exchanges

A bitcoin address that had not spent its coins in 13 years moved all 411.45 BTC to a new address early on Oct. 19 Korea time. Blockchain records show that an address beginning with "13Coop" sent the entire balance to a single new address beginning with "bc1q2e68" at 3:23 a.m. KST on Oct. 19, in block 972,036. At Binance prices around the time of the move, in the $81,000 range, the coins were worth about $33.4 million, or more than 44 billion won.

Two deposits, four minutes apart, on an autumn night in 2013

The coins arrived late on Sept. 11, 2013, UTC. A transaction in block 257,411 at 23:45 delivered 411 BTC, followed four minutes later by 0.45 BTC in block 257,412. The 411 BTC transaction consolidated coins that had been split into 25 pieces at a single address, and neither transaction paid a fee. CoinDesk put the bitcoin price at the time at about $131, valuing the 411.45 BTC at roughly $54,000.

Neither deposit was spent for the next 13 years. In that time bitcoin went through three halvings, in 2016, 2020 and 2024, each of which cut mining rewards in half, and its price rose more than 600-fold. Bitcoin traded at $82,758 on Binance on the afternoon of Oct. 19, putting the 411.45 BTC at about $34.05 million.

From a legacy address to "bc1q," for a 337-satoshi fee

The transaction spent only the two 2013 deposits. With two inputs and one output, and no change address, all 411.44999663 BTC went to the new address. The sending address uses the early format that starts with a 1 (P2PKH), while the receiving address uses the SegWit format introduced in 2017, which starts with bc1q. The newer format needs less data for the same transaction, so fees are lower.

The fee was 337 satoshis (a satoshi is one hundred-millionth of a bitcoin), or about 1 satoshi per byte of transaction size. At current prices that is less than 400 won. CoinDesk said the move to a new SegWit address looked more like an address change for security than a sign of an imminent sale.

25 dust deposits from 13 years left untouched

The two deposits are not the address's only history. From 2014 through this year it received 25 tiny deposits of a few hundred to tens of thousands of satoshis. These so-called dust deposits are meant to leave a record rather than transfer value, and from 2014 to 2021 several came from addresses carrying advertising text, such as 1Factom, 1BestMix and 1BUYBTC. CoinDesk said blockchain analytics firm Arkham labels some of them as phishing addresses.

The owner did not touch any of the dust this time, leaving 114,012 satoshis at the old address. The last of the 25 deposits, worth 1,010 satoshis, arrived at 6:09 a.m. KST on Oct. 19, after the coins had left. Spending dust together with other coins can link addresses to a single owner and be used for tracking.

The new address is still quiet

As of 3:30 p.m. KST on Oct. 19, the new address had no transactions other than the one it received and had sent nothing out. No transfer to an address known to belong to an exchange has been identified. The new address was used for the first time in this transaction. It is not the first time this month that long-dormant coins have moved. On Oct. 13, an address that had held 4,582 BTC since March 2020 moved its entire balance, splitting it across five new addresses. That move split the coins across several addresses, while this one sent them to a single address in one piece.

The Korean market was calm. At 3:30 p.m. KST on Oct. 19, bitcoin traded at 111,094,000 won on Upbit, up 0.5% from the previous day. That was 0.66% above the Binance price converted to won, keeping the kimchi premium (the gap between prices on Korean exchanges and global markets) below 1%.