An old Bitcoin wallet has suddenly come back to life. This week, it moved over $257 million worth of BTC after sitting dormant for 11 years.
The crypto tracker Lookonchain first noticed this unknown address. On Tuesday, it transferred 2,700 BTC to another wallet.
This wallet received its stash of Bitcoin back in December 2013, when the price was just $625.84. Fast forward to now, and BTC is priced at $95,361. That means the value of the wallet's holdings skyrocketed by an incredible 15,137.4% over those 11 years.
According to data from BitInfoCharts, the wallet wasn’t entirely inactive. It did receive tiny amounts of Bitcoin a few times. However, these transactions likely resulted from what are called dusting attacks.
Dusting attacks happen when hackers send small fractions of cryptocurrency, known as "dust," to many wallets. Their goal? To compromise the privacy of wallet holders. By tracking these tiny transactions, they aim to uncover the identities behind the wallets.
As for Bitcoin's current status, it’s trading at $98,687. This leading cryptocurrency has risen over 3% in the last 24 hours. It’s also less than 1% away from its all-time high of $99,645, reached on November 22nd.