A wallet from the Ethereum initial coin offering in 2015, which had remained inactive for eight years, has recently come to life by transferring its holdings to another address. This unexpected move has caused questions about the potential impact on the Ethereum market and the motives of the awakening of the dormant wallet.
The Awakening Of A Sleeping Giant
The on-chain analysts at Lookonchain first noticed the activity within this wallet, which first initiated a test transaction and then transferred the remaining 7,999 ETH ($14.7 million). The wallet had acquired its 8,000 ETH holdings during the Ethereum ICO at a bargain price of approximately $0.31 per token.
Following the transfer, the funds found their way into another wallet that has limited transaction history. Moments before this transfer happened, an inbound transaction of 207 ether ($380,000) was recorded in the same wallet from a distinct wallet that had been inactive since 2017. The motives behind this consolidation and the subsequent movement of funds remain unknown.
Speculations On Moved Dormant Ethereum
The crypto community speculates that the participant of the Ethereum ICO may have migrated from their old ledger wallet. This is because Ledger, a leading hardware wallet provider, recently faced a significant backlash when it unveiled a new feature called Recover, intended as a cryptographic backup for users’ seed phrases. Community backlash intensified when Ledger’s CEO confirmed that the government could access clients’ private keys through the Ledger Recover feature in case of a subpoena.
As users become increasingly vigilant about the custody of their digital assets, many have migrated away from Ledger in search of a safer alternative. Speculation suggests that the person behind the movement of the dormant ETH may fall into this category.
The Ethereum market remains unshaken by this news, with Ethereum up by 1.1% over the past 24 hours, trading at $1,845.
-Featured image from Unsplash, Chart from TradingView
