An Ethereum address tied to the network's 2014 initial coin offering transferred all 2,680 ETH it had held, worth roughly $5.04 million at current prices, after sitting completely dormant for more than 11 years. The wallet, identified on-chain as "0xB749," originally paid just $831 to acquire its ETH during the presale — a return of about 6,068 times the original investment.
The funds moved to new wallets rather than directly to an exchange, based on the transaction record, leaving open whether the holder is repositioning for custody reasons or preparing to sell.
Part of a Wider Pattern in 2026
This is far from an isolated event this year. Ethereum's 2014 presale sold roughly 60 million ETH to the public at about $0.31 per token between July and September of that year, and a steady stream of those decade-old wallets has been waking up throughout 2026. One participant who paid $443 for 1,430 ETH saw a wallet worth $2.8 million once it moved, a roughly 6,316x return; another turned a $245 stake into about $1.79 million, a 7,303x gain. On-chain trackers including Arkham Intelligence and Lookonchain have flagged several of these reactivations this year, and in at least one earlier case ETH's price dipped modestly in the hours after a large dormant wallet stirred, before recovering within a day.
Why These Wallets Matter to the Market
Each reactivation is a reminder of how much of Ethereum's early supply remains concentrated in addresses that have never interacted with an exchange, a decentralized application, or even a simple transfer since the presale. Because these coins were acquired at fractions of a cent, holders face little pressure to sell regardless of where ETH trades — but when one does move, traders watch closely for signs of imminent selling given the size of unrealized gains involved.
Related: Whale Buys Another 50,000 ETH Worth $93.6M and Stakes It
What Happens Next
Whether the newly moved 2,680 ETH ends up on an exchange or simply resettles into cold storage under new custody will determine whether this reactivation has any near-term price impact. For now, it stands as one more example of Ethereum's original believers being repaid many thousand times over — a dynamic that continues to play out alongside more active players in the ETH ecosystem whose on-chain behavior draws just as much scrutiny.
