A Bitcoin address that had not been active since November 2011 has recently become active again, transferring 40 BTC coins in block 965330, which, according to reports at the time, was worth approximately $3.09 million. On-chain monitoring data indicates that these Bitcoins had been dormant for nearly 15 years.
Address that has been inactive for nearly 15 years has seen transfers again
When these assets were first transferred in, the price of Bitcoin was still in its very early stages, with a unit price of about $3. Calculated based on this, the corresponding book value increase for this transfer exceeds 2.57 million percent.
Ancient addresses that are held for a long time are already rare, so any change in their status attracts market attention. This particular incident has received extra attention not only because of the long holding period but also because the address is labeled as “Noah Doe #38097” by the blockchain’s tagging system.
On-chain tags point to a lawsuit in New York
The report mentions that this tag is related to a class action lawsuit currently being heard by the New York State Supreme Court. The plaintiffs are attempting to claim ownership of 39,069 long-dormant Bitcoin addresses, involving assets with a total value of approximately $293 billion, which also includes some addresses that are considered to belong to the early days of Satoshi Nakamoto's era.
The plaintiff's core argument is that if encrypted assets have not been transferred for more than 5 years, they can be considered "abandoned property" according to the relevant logic in New York State's Lost Property Act of 1958, thereby allowing third parties to make claims to those assets.
The plaintiff made a small transfer to the specified address.
To promote this claim, the plaintiff sent small amounts of money via micro-transfers to relevant addresses, which is a common practice known as "dust transactions," in an attempt to attach litigation markers to approximately 39,000 addresses that had not been active for a long time.
This transfer of 40 BTC tokens is seen by the outside world as a direct response to the aforementioned logic. The reactivation of the address indicates that not using it for an extended period does not necessarily mean that the assets have been abandoned; it could also be that the holder has chosen to keep the private key and continue holding the tokens without conducting any transactions.
From a market perspective, changes in ancient addresses usually draw attention to the behavior of early coin holders; from a legal standpoint, this transaction has also reignited the debate surrounding whether "inactive addresses equal abandoned assets."
