A slew of dormant addresses that indulged in Bitcoin transactions in its early years are now gradually returning as they have resumed activity. Lookonchain quoted tweets from Whale Alert and reported that three whales totaling 8,199 BTC worth $225 million have resumed trading in the last five days.
First, after being inactive for 9.3 years, an address with 6071 BTC worth $178.12 million was activated. BTC was only worth $3.3 million in 2013. Shortly after, another address with 1128 BTC worth $31.5 million was reactivated after being inactive for 10.5 years. After a 12-year gap, an address containing 1,000 BTC, valued at around $27.4 million, was also taken over.
However, these activities have raised concerns among Bitcoin enthusiasts. Ryan Neuner used his Twitter account and said“These old BTC addresses becoming active could be really scary. Hopefully it’s not a wallet generator that got hacked. It could be catastrophic.
Although it seems like many wallets are becoming active right now, the proportion of supply that hasn’t changed in over five years continues to rise. As Watcher Guru reports, it hit a new all-time high of 28.626% on Tuesday, April 25, indicating that much of the circulating supply hasn’t changed in at least five years.
Another user tweeted, “I did a bunch of blockchain analysis in 2015. I mainly focused on these old bitcoin addresses. What I discovered then was that over time, the number of old bitcoin addresses that were spawned decreased. Nevertheless, it was not uncommon for an old address to occasionally come back to life.