An anonymous wallet has "woken up" after 13 years, transferring 909 BTC worth approximately $84.6 million. Whale Alert reported this development.
💤 💤 💤 💤 💤 💤 💤 💤 💤 A dormant address containing 909 #BTC (84,588,851 USD) has just been activated after 13.2 years! https://t.co/Bn1F97iP78
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) January 19, 2026
According to Lookonchain, the whale sent the funds to a new address.
A Bitcoin OG has woken up after 13 years of dormancy, moving all 909.38 $BTC ($84.62M) into a new wallet.
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) January 20, 2026
When this OG first received $BTC 13 years ago, the price was under $7 — now up ~13,900×. https://t.co/gc0FeYxGkz pic.twitter.com/lxfikGdfNl
Analysts noted that the large investor acquired the cryptocurrency between December 2012 and April 2013, when the price was below $7.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $91,200, giving the user an unrealized profit of over 13,000%.
Hourly chart of BTC/USDT on Binance. Source: TradingView.
The identity of the old and new wallet owner remains unknown.
Jacob King, founder and CEO of WhaleWire, believes the address may belong to Satoshi Nakamoto.
This Satoshi-era Bitcoin whale has just woken up after well over a decade of dormancy. The entire 909.38 BTC was transferred into a new wallet, likely being set up for off-chain settlements and synthetic exposure sells.
— Jacob King (@JacobKinge) January 20, 2026
When this whale first received the BTC, the price was… pic.twitter.com/9civLKtRNX
“Many investors naively believe that Satoshi controlled only the well-known wallet with 1 million BTC. In reality, it is much more likely that these coins were early fragmented into hundreds of 'dormant' wallets, each intended for independent aging and subsequent circulation without a recognizable pattern,” he wrote.
The surge in activity from Nakamoto-era whales occurred in 2025 when the price of digital gold first surpassed $100,000.
The last activation was recorded in December when a Bitcoin miner dormant for 15 years moved 50 BTC worth $4.3 million to five new addresses.
Preparing for "Q Day"
Typically, the "awakening" of such market participants sparks lively discussions on social media regarding potential profit-taking and its impact on Bitcoin's price.
However, the activated whale has not yet sent funds to exchanges. Instead, it transferred assets from a Legacy wallet to Bech32—a more modern and efficient format.
In this context, a user named Dylan GraBowski speculated that the investor "woke up" due to increasing risks from quantum computing.
They're prepping for QDay.
— DylanΞGra₿owski (@GrabowskiDylan) January 20, 2026
“He’s just preparing for Q Day,” the user wrote.
Bech32 addresses use the ECDSA transaction signing algorithm, which the community fears could be compromised.
Notably, Castle Island Ventures partner Nic Carter criticized developers for ignoring the threat of quantum computing. He believes that the reluctance to acknowledge these risks is already weighing on the price of the leading cryptocurrency.
Meanwhile, Blockstream co-founder and cypherpunk Adam Back stated that quantum systems capable of breaking Bitcoin's cryptography will not emerge for another 20-40 years.