Dormant Bitcoin Activity Slows as 35 Transfers Move $167 Million

October brought another round of long-sleeping bitcoin wallets back to life, but the action was considerably quieter than the fireworks witnessed in August and September. Between Oct. 1 and Oct. 30, btcparser.com tracked 35 transfers involving 2,159.15 BTC, worth approximately $167.56 million using a reference price of $77,606 per coin.

The month’s biggest transaction came on Oct. 20, when a wallet established Jan. 23, 2016, moved a whopping 500 BTC valued at $38.80 million. Yet that blockbuster transfer concealed a broader retreat in dormant bitcoin spending.

October’s Dormant Bitcoin Transfers Fall Sharply From August

The figures show a pronounced cooldown from August’s 6,427.59 BTC across 188 transfers and September’s 5,419.45 BTC through 94 movements. October’s bitcoin volume dropped roughly 66% from August and 60% from September, while transaction counts contracted even more sharply.

July, however, was quieter still, with 30 transfers totaling 1,264.16 BTC. October’s average transaction reached 61.69 BTC, exceeding the previous three months despite its substantially smaller overall volume.

The October activity was anything but evenly distributed. Between Oct. 17 and Oct. 21, just 10 transfers accounted for 1,620.75 BTC, or approximately three-quarters of the month’s total. Four transactions alone moved 1,361.21 BTC, valued at $105.64 million.

Bitcoin Wallets From 2013 Take Center Stage

Addresses first funded in 2013 stole the show, accounting for 993.61 BTC worth $77.11 million across 11 transfers. That represented 46.02% of October’s bitcoin volume, compared with approximately 16% in September and 13% in August.

The 2016 cohort ranked second with 546.95 BTC, followed by 2017 addresses with 355.93 BTC. Wallets established in 2014 contributed 174.46 BTC, a far cry from August’s 3,286.26 BTC attributed to that vintage.

One particularly intriguing pairing occurred Oct. 17, when two 2013 wallets transferred 248.85 BTC and 167.84 BTC just five seconds apart within block 971894. Their synchronized timing suggests possible common control, although the blockchain evidence alone cannot establish shared ownership.

October’s Biggest Day Packs a $39 Million Wallop

Oct. 20 packed the heaviest punch, with 511.20 BTC moving in a single day, worth approximately $39.67 million. That same date also witnessed activity from the oldest address in the dataset, established Feb. 14, 2012, which transferred 11.2 BTC after more than 14 years. Another noteworthy detail involved two wallets created on consecutive Christmas dates in 2015. Both transferred exactly 10 BTC on Oct. 23, with their movements separated by eight minutes.

The smallest transactions were comparatively modest, including three transfers below 0.01 BTC. Such activity depends partly on btcparser.com’s detection criteria and should not be interpreted as a complete accounting of every older bitcoin address spending coins.

Bitcoin’s Earliest Wallets Go Quiet

Perhaps the most telling absence involved addresses originating in 2010 and 2011. Neither vintage appeared in October’s dataset, following September’s 600 BTC attributed to 2010 wallets alone. The latest figures capture spending from selected dormant addresses rather than verified sales, meaning the coins could have been transferred between wallets controlled by the same holder.

The four-month sleeping bitcoin movement total from July through October 2026 was 15,270.35 BTC, worth approximately $1.185 billion using current BTC exchange rates. With October’s activity concentrated in a handful of hefty transactions, the lingering mystery isn’t simply how much bitcoin moved. It’s whether these aging holdings are changing hands or merely changing to newer bitcoin addresses.