- Dormant Bitcoin wallets holding $8 billion moved last week after 14 years of inactivity
- Coinbase exec Conor Grogan suggests transfer could be linked to compromised private keys
- Test transaction on Bitcoin Cash raises speculation of stealth wallet access check
A sudden and highly unusual movement of $8 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC) from dormant whale wallets has raised concerns among analysts, with a Coinbase executive suggesting that the transfers may be linked to a possible wallet compromise or hack.
Conor Grogan, a director at Coinbase, flagged the activity on social platform X, noting the odd behavior of wallets that had remained untouched for more than 14 years. The dormant wallets collectively held BTC acquired before the 2011 bull market, making their reactivation particularly significant.
Suspicious BCH transaction precedes Bitcoin movement
Grogan’s on-chain analysis suggests that the movements may not have been initiated by the original wallet owner. He identified a test transaction on the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network coming from one of the Bitcoin whale clusters just an hour before the BTC wallets began moving.
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“There is a small possibility that the $8 billion in BTC that recently woke up were hacked or compromised private keys,” Grogan wrote. “I found a single BCH test transaction from one of the BTC whale cluster followed by the full amount. An hour later, the BTC wallets began to move.”
The implication is that whoever accessed the BTC wallets may have used Bitcoin Cash as a stealth testing ground, since BCH is less monitored by whale-tracking systems compared to Bitcoin.
Why BCH matters in the investigation
Bitcoin Cash, created in 2017 as a hard fork of Bitcoin, preserved historical wallet balances. That means anyone with BTC prior to the fork also holds equivalent BCH in the same wallet address.
Grogan pointed out that while the BCH test transaction was executed, other associated BCH wallets were left untouched, raising further questions.
He emphasized that this is still speculation, but the pattern appears manual rather than exchange-driven, making the situation even more mysterious.
Not a normal exchange movement
Grogan noted that the nature of the BTC transactions, along with the unusual BCH activity, suggest the addresses may not belong to a crypto exchange. Most centralized entities don’t test private key access via BCH, and the timing and structure of the transactions do not resemble automated batch transfers.
The incident has sparked broader discussion across crypto monitoring communities, with some analysts warning that wallet access recovery from early Bitcoin days could lead to further surprises whether through legitimate activity or malicious access.
While no hack has been officially confirmed, the possibility of private key compromise tied to legacy wallets underscores the ongoing risks of long-term crypto storage without modern security practices.
