Bitcoin whale that sat through the March 2020 crash moves $378 million

A bitcoin BTC$83,696.96 whale that received its coins days before the Covid crash of March 2020 and sat through it has moved $377.6 million worth of them.

The wallet, 18VmXvkF4cgLi35RtMiHHDpvMjUCyVpQ9x, sent roughly 4,582 BTC to five addresses on Monday, according to blockchain data from Arkham and mempool.space, two public explorers that show every bitcoin transaction.

Four of the addresses got exactly 1,000 BTC each. The fifth got about 582 BTC. As of this writing, none of the five has moved the coins.

The coins arrived in that wallet on March 3, 2020, from the address 17VX1BEjYVyBMi2vw6nXDrpwMvCSweHZot, the same records show. Nine days later, Covid-19 panic hit markets and bitcoin plunged more than 40% to under $4,000. The market has not revisited that price since.

The coins were worth about $40.8 million when they arrived. By yesterday’s transfer, their value had risen roughly ninefold.

The wallet sent nothing out for more than four years after receiving them. Its first outgoing transaction came in August 2024. That was a small payment of 0.009 BTC to bc1qmpjs55x326wvnvtwvkwfqqzzlyljk7ffmdw32g, with the rest of the bitcoin returned to the same wallet.