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A bitcoin wallet untouched since 2013 just moved 411 BTC, and it is one of those a lawsuit calls abandoned
Summary
A bitcoin address first funded on Sept. 11, 2013, moved all 411.45 BTC it held to a new address on Sunday, its first outgoing transfer, according to CoinDesk and Decrypt, which cited Arkham Intelligence and Galaxy Research data; SourcedBlock confirmed the transaction on the public blockchain in block 972,036.
The outlets value the coins slightly differently: CoinDesk put them at about $34 million at a price near $82,600, while Decrypt, citing Galaxy Research, said about $33.4 million; both said the stash was worth about $54,000 when bitcoin traded near $130 in 2013 (CoinDesk said $131).
Decrypt reported that Galaxy tagged the address as “Noah Doe #970,” one of 39,069 dormant addresses named in a New York lawsuit filed this year by a pseudonymous plaintiff and two Wyoming companies who argue the wallets, holding about 3.8 million BTC, are abandoned property, even though the plaintiffs hold none of the private keys.
The coins went to an address that is not an exchange, and CoinDesk said the move to a modern SegWit address suggests a security upgrade rather than an imminent sale, while Decrypt said such moves chip away at the lawsuit’s premise because spending coins requires the private keys.
Key facts
- The transaction spent two outputs from address 13Coop8xFbYj9JR9WyF5EqzGa9GiZmxs7C and sent 411.44999663 BTC to a single bc1q address, paying a fee of 337 satoshis; it was confirmed in block 972,036 at 18:23 UTC on Oct. 18.
- CoinDesk said the wallet received dozens of tiny deposits over the years, several from addresses Arkham labels as phishing, a tactic known as address poisoning, and that the owner did not fall for it.
- Decrypt said Galaxy flagged the address as one of those “dusted” in a 2025 campaign that sent tiny amounts of bitcoin carrying embedded messages to dormant wallets, which Galaxy has described as groundwork for the abandonment claim.
- Decrypt said Galaxy put the holder’s average cost basis near $127 and the paper gain at more than 64,000%, and that Galaxy head of research Alex Thorn has said the pace of dormant “Noah Doe” coins moving onchain has been accelerating month over month.
- CoinDesk said that a day earlier two other wallets dormant for more than a decade moved a combined 417 BTC, and that the destination wallet in Sunday’s move had made no outgoing transactions.