Dormant Ethereum ICO wallet resurfaces after 8 years with $15M funds
A wallet that dates back to the initial coin offering (ICO) of Ethereum (ETH) in 2015 has grabbed the attention of the cryptocurrency community after it suddenly transferred a significant amount of funds.
The wallet had been completely inactive since the ICO and on Saturday, on-chain data from Etherscan showed that it transferred all of its 8,000 ETH to another newly created address.
The fund transfer was made in two transactions- first one test transaction worth only 1 ETH and then another transfer of the remaining 7,999 ETH.
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The transfers are worth around $15.2 million by today’s exchange rate, which is a huge increase in value since it was set up during the ICO with ETH worth only $2,500.
One noteworthy detail is that the new wallet, which received the funds, recorded an inbound transaction of 207 ETH worth close to $400,000 just moments earlier.
The transaction came from a wallet that had been inactive since 2017 and it is still unknown who owns it and why the funds are being consolidated.
On Twitter, on-chain researcher Lookonchain was quick to share details about the original transaction, with members of the cryptocurrency community taking the opportunity to comment under the tweet with their own theories about the transfer.
“Maybe switch from Ledger”, one user suggested, referring to the controversy around the popular hardware wallet Ledger’s new “Recover” service.
Ledger launched its first version of a hardware wallet in 2014, which makes it plausible that the mysterious Ethereum whale could be storing his or her funds on one of the early iterations of the device.
