Dormant Bitcoin Wallets Wake Up, Moving $40 Million in Assets

Galaxy Research tracked the movements from addresses dating back to 2011, 2012, and 2014. Of the six transfers, five were sent to private addresses with no public exchange affiliation. Only one transaction, involving 40 BTC, was directed to Boerse Stuttgart Digital, a German provider of crypto custody services. These holdings, acquired at historical prices as low as $5 to $14 per coin, have seen extreme appreciation, with one wallet recording a gain of roughly 1,535,911%.

Two of the addresses, labeled as "Noah Doe" accounts, are currently tied to a contentious New York Supreme Court lawsuit. The litigation involves a bid by plaintiffs to assert control over 39,069 dormant addresses under state property laws. Legal experts, including M&A attorney Ian R. Cohen, have challenged the premise that long-term inactivity constitutes abandonment of self-custodied assets. While some market watchers speculate that the activity could be linked to security migrations—particularly following recent firmware vulnerabilities in certain hardware wallets—there is no on-chain confirmation that the owners are liquidating their positions or responding to the ongoing litigation.