Ethereum ICO Whale Breaks Decade of Dormancy, Moves $3.5M Worth of ETH

An anonymous crypto whale who participated in Ethereum's Initial Coin Offering (ICO) has come out of a decade of dormancy to move some of their ETH holdings.

An entity that participated in Ethereum's (CRYPTO: ETH) Initial Coin Offering (ICO) has finally moved some of their ETH holdings after remaining largely dormant for a decade.

According to a report by popular smart money on-chain platform Lookonchain on Monday, the Ethereum ICO participant made their first transaction after 9.4 years of inactivity.

The whale moved 0.01 ETH to an unknown address, "0x296…Ee557," today at 04:40 a.m. (UTC). With ETH currently trading at $3,394 per coin, this transaction is valued at $33.94 at press time.

This marks the wallet's first transaction since it first received 1,940 ETH coins during the Ethereum ICO in 2015. According to Lookonchain, the entire portfolio of 1,940 ETH was valued at $601 at the time. Interestingly, after a decade of holding, the value has skyrocketed to a jaw-dropping $6.56 million today.

After the ICO wallet initiated its first transaction following dormancy, it has been involved in a series of other transactions, sending and receiving ETH over the past few hours.

Overall, the whale has moved 1,042.22 ETH ($3.53 million) to different blockchain addresses and received only 0.01 ETH ($34.25). At the time of writing, the ICO wallet still holds 897.77 ETH, currently valued at $3.04 million.

The sudden awakening of a long-term dormant wallet usually creates a buzz within the crypto community, sparking speculations that the wallet's owner recently regained access to their lost private keys.

This type of activity is not in isolation. In recent weeks, The Crypto Basic has reported a series of re-awakenings of Ethereum ICO participants.

For instance, on December 25, an Ethereum ICO whale moved 4,160 ETH, valued at $14.5 million at the time, to the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange. The whale received 20,000 ETH during the Ethereum ICO and has been dumping its holdings at local peaks since September 2024, offloading over 5,000 ETH ever since.

In September, another Ethereum ICO wallet ended its two-year dormancy by dumping 10,000 ETH at an aggregate price of $24.37 million. The following month, a wallet that also participated in the Ethereum ICO transferred $12.22 million worth of ETH tokens to Kraken.

These developments come as Ethereum attempts to recover from the recent downturn that plunged its price to near $3,000. At press time, ETH is trading at $3,394, up 0.83% over the past 24 hours and 2.59% in the past seven days.