12-year-dormant Bitcoin wallet moves 500 BTC ($40.6M)

At about 3:16 p.m. ET on Sunday, 500 BTC left legacy-format address 1KAA8…d882j and arrived at bech32 address bc1qm…hjrxy, according to on-chain records. The coins had been held in the originating address since Nov. 27, 2013.

When the 500 BTC were first received in 2013, their value was roughly $457,070. At recent prices the holding is worth about $40.6 million, an approximate 89-fold nominal increase over the period.

Blockchain data shows the transfer occurred as a single transaction rather than a sequence of smaller transfers. The owner of the addresses has not been publicly identified.

There is no public explanation for the transfer. Owners of long-dormant wallets sometimes consolidate or relocate coins for security or management reasons, and large transfers can precede sales.

The originating address used a legacy address format. The destination is a bech32 address, which supports SegWit, a protocol upgrade introduced after 2013 to reduce transaction fees and improve efficiency.

Bitcoin's price has traded around $81,000 to $82,000 in recent weeks, up from about $66,000 roughly a month earlier. Similar long-dormant activity has appeared recently, including a wallet that moved roughly $23 million in ETH after remaining inactive since July 2015.

There is no on-chain indication whether the funds will remain in the destination address, be moved again, or be exchanged for other assets.