Six decade-old bitcoin wallets moved $40 million in 10 days, and most sidestepped exchanges

Six bitcoin wallets, dormant for a decade or more, moved a combined 553.59 BTC between Aug. 16 and Aug. 26. That is roughly $40.15 million, per Galaxy Research counts of on-chain activity. Most of those coins never touched the open market. They landed at professional custody infrastructure instead.

Against bitcoin’s roughly $1.5 trillion float, the burst is modest in dollar terms. The vintage is what makes it worth watching. The oldest of the six wallets sat idle since June 2011, when BTC traded in the low single digits. Another 212 BTC, untouched since August 2012, carried a cost basis near $12. That is an unrealized gain of roughly 557,640%. A separate 40 BTC tranche, last held in May 2012, moved to German custody bank Boerse Stuttgart Digital. Gain on cost basis: about 1,535,911%.

Galaxy flagged the 2026 bar in its dormant-coin chart as not directly comparable to full prior years. The year is only part way through. Even so, the oldest cohort already registers more prominently than in most earlier years, when movement from decade-old coins was barely perceptible.

Where did the coins go? The chain rarely tells the story. In these recent cases, funds flowed toward custody and institutional rails rather than exchange hot wallets. That pattern tracks with long-holders rotating into safer setups instead of booking gains. Traders, as ever, disagree on what it signals.

Two candidate drivers surface in the Decrypt account. Several reawakened wallets carry a “Salomon Client Dusted” tag tied to the Noah Doe case, a New York suit seeking to have roughly 39,069 dormant addresses declared abandoned property. Named wallets have stirred regularly since a judge paused the case in June. Separately, roughly 233,000 BTC left long-term wallets during the Coldcard hardware-wallet exploit as spooked holders rushed funds to safer custody.

The macro backdrop is anything but quiet. Bitcoin fell as low as $76,877 on Friday after Fed Chair Kevin Warsh used his first Jackson Hole keynote to warn that inflation isn’t cooling fast enough and the central bank still has “work to do.” CME FedWatch odds of a September rate hike jumped to about 56% from 35% just a day earlier. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs, meanwhile, drew $2.8 billion over eight straight days through Wednesday. That is the longest inflow streak since April. Prediction-market traders lean toward a run toward $84,000 over a slide to $55,000.

That mix leaves the OG-wallet stir as one signal among several. The coins moved. Most did not head to exchanges. What happens next, on the chain or in court, is not yet clear.