Six Dormant Bitcoin Wallets Move $40M in 10 Days, But 2026 Activity Trails 2025

Six Bitcoin wallets that had not moved a single satoshi in more than a decade sent a combined $40 million on-chain over a 10-day stretch this month, according to data compiled by Galaxy Research. The figure is confirmed by two independent outlets, Decrypt and CoinDesk, both citing the same underlying Galaxy dataset.

What Two Sources Actually Agree On

The core, verified fact is narrow: six wallets untouched for 10-plus years reactivated within a 10-day window, moving $40 million worth of BTC in aggregate. Both outlets attribute this figure to Galaxy Research, which tracks bitcoin’s oldest unspent transaction outputs as a proxy for long-term holder behavior.

Where the two reports diverge is framing, not fact. Decrypt describes the reactivation as unusually fast for coins this old. CoinDesk, drawing on the same Galaxy figures, reports that most of the coins moved avoided exchanges entirely, and that overall dormant coin activity across the market is running at its lowest level since 2022.

Where the Coins Didn’t Go

The detail that matters most for traders is the destination, not the amount. CoinDesk’s reporting notes that the majority of the $40 million bypassed exchange deposit addresses. That distinction separates a wallet reactivation from a sell signal.

Old-coin movements have historically triggered speculation about early miners or long-lost private keys resurfacing to cash out. When funds land on Coinbase or Binance deposit wallets, that reading holds up. When they move to cold storage, custody services, or new self-custodied addresses instead, the more likely explanation is estate settlement, wallet consolidation, or security migration rather than imminent selling.

The Bigger Number: 2026 Is Below 2025

The $40 million figure looks striking in isolation. Set against the year, it looks different. Galaxy’s broader dataset, as reported by CoinDesk, shows dormant coin activity in 2026 on pace to finish under half of last year’s total volume of old-coin movements.

That is the aggregated snapshot worth holding onto. A single 10-day cluster of six wallets is a real, dated event. It sits inside a year that, by Galaxy’s own count, has seen markedly less dormant supply come back to life than 2025 did. Both things are true at once, and neither source contradicts the other on the raw numbers, only on which number leads the story.

Bitcoin traded near $77,916, down roughly 0.4% on the day the figures circulated. Neither outlet ties the wallet movements to that price action, and nothing in either report suggests a causal link between the $40 million reactivation and short-term price moves. What’s confirmed stops at the on-chain figures themselves: six wallets, ten years dormant, ten days, $40 million, mostly off exchanges, inside a year running below 2025’s dormancy pace.

Sources

• decrypt.co
• coindesk.com