BTC Legacy Whales Have Been Moving

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A bitcoin wallet linked to a legacy BTC whale transferred 750 BTC to Binance on Tuesday. Using Arkham Intel, it is possible to trace the BTC to a separate address 12 years ago in 2013. 

At the time of the purchase, BTC was trading at around $332. The whale sold 750 BTC when one Bitcoin was valued at $110,000. 

On-chain analyst Lookonchain, who uses Arkham Intel, estimates the total profit from these transactions to be $550M. 

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This move comes a month after a massive holder of over 80,000 BTC cashed out entirely through Galaxy Digital, beginning on 4th July 2025. Around half of this was consolidated in a single wallet before being transferred to Galaxy Digital.

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Also in July of 2025, an early holder shifted 10,603 BTC now worth roughly $1.26 billion after years of inactivity, while another legacy BTC wallet from 2011 moved 3,962 BTC, worth $468 million at the time, to a new address. This wallet had been assumed to be lost.

Earlier in July, a user of Xapo Bank had transferred around $1.75B of BTC to new addresses as part of an address rotation. He had been holding this since 2019.

In March, a legacy whale who had been holding for 8 years woke up for a routine transfer. Unfortunately, one month later his entire stack of 3,450 BTC worth $325M was stolen.

The awakening of legacy wallets are often intensely scrutinised events. They can have an intense psychological impact on the market and lead to sell-offs and subsequent price dips. However, the awakening of a dormant address does not always mean there will be increased selling pressure. 

Owners of legacy wallets could just be moving to a new address to upgrade security, consolidating holdings, or splitting holdings across several wallets. 

It is also worth pointing out that although many of these legacy wallets are large BTC whales, profit taking from them is not likely to massively move the market. Bitcoin’s market cap is $2.42 trillion at the time of writing, it would take a lot of whales to cause serious selling pressure, especially in the era of ETFs and treasury companies. 

It is likely that some of these legacy holders are simply taking profits after so many years of holding. 

It has also been suggested by on-chain analyst Lookonchain that BTC holders are rotating into ETH. Using Arkham intel again, Lookonchain found a wallet holding $642 million in BTC ending its 7-year-dormancy by selling BTC and opening a huge $577 million ETH long position on Hyperliquid. 

The BTC-ETH rotation theory is also corroborated by ETF inflows over the last few days with ETH ETF inflows outpacing BTC.