The past few months have seen an unusual number of ancient Bitcoin (BTC) whales come back to life after years of dormancy. The new week in the crypto market has started with yet another one emerging from the crypt.
Thanks to a report from Whale Alert, dormant address “1PNRpMZ” containing 18 BTC has been activated after almost 11 years. The early Bitcoin investor, who was last active in November 2013, has transferred part of their coins to two other new addresses “3EgCi” and “15UaJb.”
These may be test transactions, and the choice of address type is interesting, as usually such transfers happen to new type “bc1,” but this particular investor chose the types 3 and 1 of BTC addresses.
💤 A dormant address containing 18 #BTC (1,132,682 USD) has just been activated after 10.9 years (worth 10,883 USD in 2013)!https://t.co/wsCwt15gZL
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) October 13, 2024
What’s happening?
For those who do not know, Bitcoin addresses come in three main types: Legacy, Pay-to-Script hash and Bech32.
Long story short, Legacy addresses start with 1 and are in the original format offer basic functionality but less efficiency. P2SH addresses start with 3 and allow for more complex transactions, such as multi-signature wallets. Bech32 addresses, starting with bc1, are the latest format, optimized for Segregated Witness (SegWit) transactions, offering lower fees, better scalability and improved network efficiency.
Thus, our early investor opted for the original 1 format of Bitcoin addresses. Meanwhile, the bulk of their wallet, now estimated at $1.15 million, resides in the “1PNRp” address. Imagine that, in 2013, it cost the unknown investor only $10,883 to acquire 18 BTC, and now they see a 10,408% profit on their holdings.
On average, that is a 946.2% return on investment for every year held.