An Ethereum Wallet Untouched for 11 Years Just Moved 2,155 Ethereum. How Much Did Its Owner Make?
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An Ethereum (CRYPTO:ETH) wallet that lay dormant since the network launched has finally come to life, moving 2,155 ETH. Whale Alert, a blockchain tracking service, flagged the move on November 9, 2026, and identified the wallet as a pre-mine address, meaning it received coins in Ethereum’s first block. According to Whale Alert, the wallet had been inactive for 11.3 years, and the coins were worth about $4.6 million when they moved.
Alerts like this can worry holders, because an early investor moving coins may look like a sale coming. Ethereum trades at $2,069, down nearly 3% over the past 24 hours and about 58.2% below its all-time high of $4,946 from August 24, 2025. So how much did this Ethereum whale make, and could the move hurt ETH’s price?
Chain Data Confirms 1,400 Presale ETH Plus 755 Bought in 2016
On-chain analytics firm Lookonchain reports that the owner bought 1,400 ETH during Ethereum’s initial coin offering (ICO) at around $0.31 each, or about $434 in total. Later, the owner withdrew another 755 ETH from Bitfinex when Ethereum traded at $11.74. Blockscout, a public blockchain explorer, supports this, tagging the wallet as a genesis address whose first incoming transfer was 755 ETH in March 2016.
The $0.31 price matches the opening rate of the 2014 presale, while Ethereum’s close of around $11.74 on March 28, 2016, matches the second purchase. These coins date back to Ethereum’s earliest days, long before it became the programmable network it is today.
If all 2,155 ETH had come from the presale, they would have cost roughly $668. However, blockchain data shows they didn’t. The 1,400 presale ETH cost about $434, and the 755 later ETH cost around $8,864, bringing the total to about $9,298. Against Whale Alert’s valuation of around $4.58 million, the owner now has a paper gain of about $4.57 million.
All 2,155 ETH Moved to a New Private Wallet and Stayed There
The transaction Whale Alert flagged was a 0.05 ETH test transfer, a small send wallet owners use to check that a new address works before moving larger amounts. Blockscout data show the rest of the balance left the genesis address for the same new wallet less than an hour later.
That new wallet has no exchange tag on Blockscout and still held about 2,155 ETH on November 10. A large holder about to sell would typically deposit coins on an exchange, and these coins haven’t reached one. Large wallet moves that stay off exchanges also tend not to cause major price swings, as recent whale buying of Bitcoin showed.
Both wallets have received many tiny incoming transactions since the alert. Some are zero-value transfers from lookalike addresses that copy the new wallet’s first and last characters, a scam called address poisoning that counts on the owner copying the wrong address later. Others carry messages from strangers asking for money. So the jump in the wallet’s transaction count reflects reactions to the alert, not trading.
The blockchain also has a blind spot. Most trading happens on exchanges and never gets recorded on the blockchain, so a quiet wallet could belong to someone preparing a private sale, planning to stake, or just holding with no immediate plans.
Old Wallets Are Waking Up, but Exchange Flows Drive Ethereum’s Price
This wallet is one of several early Ethereum addresses that have become active in 2026, including another genesis wallet that moved coins to a new address in May. Earlier reactivations ended in different ways: some owners staked their coins for yield, while others sent part of their holdings to exchanges or ran only test transfers.
Santiment’s age-consumed metric, which measures how many long-dormant coins move on a given day, spikes on days like this. However, it can’t show where those coins go next. Coins sent to staking reduce the supply available for trading, while coins sent to exchanges add to it, and that split counts for more now that Ethereum’s supply has started rising again.
Ethereum’s price has been falling as money leaves the market. ETH is down 9% over the past seven days and 30.4% year to date, and it trades below its 20-day moving average of $2,294, its 50-day average of $2,471 and its 200-day average of $2,154. A moving average is the average closing price over a set number of days.
For Ethereum to recover, it likely needs fresh demand from spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that hold Ethereum directly, as well as from corporate treasuries. However, one of the largest treasury buyers is closing in on its purchase limit.
How Much Has the Owner Made, and Does This Move Threaten Ethereum?
About $9,298 invested in 2014 and 2016 has grown into coins worth about $4.58 million, and the 1,400 presale ETH alone cost just $434. However, that gain stays on paper until the owner sells, and the coins remain in a private wallet with no sign of an exchange deposit. Even if the owner sells, $4.6 million is small next to Ethereum’s total market value of around $253 billion.
The first factor to watch is the coins themselves. If these 2,155 ETH move to an exchange deposit address, they would add to the sellable supply. The second is Ethereum’s price, which needs to close back above its 200-day average near $2,154 to show buyers are returning. A drop below the 90-day low of $1,874 from August 16 would signal that sellers are in control, regardless of what one old wallet does.
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Sam Daodu is a crypto analyst and the editor of 24/7 Wall St.'s Crypto Desk, where he covers Bitcoin, XRP, Ethereum, Solana and the altcoins investors search for most. His work focuses on price levels, spot ETF flows, on-chain data and the regulatory decisions that move crypto markets, written so a first-time buyer and a seasoned trader can both use it.
Sam has written about crypto professionally since 2019 and has published more than 2,000 articles. Before joining 24/7 Wall St., he wrote for crypto media outlets and Web3 companies and ghostwrote for crypto founders and token launches. His analysis is syndicated on Yahoo Finance, MSN and AOL and has been cited by other crypto news sites. He also founded MacLabs Marketing, a content and personal branding agency for crypto founders and executives.
When he isn't reading charts, Sam is usually at the gym or watching One Piece, a series he maintains has better tokenomics than most altcoins.
