A participant in the Ethereum ICO awakens after eight years to $4.42 million in ETH.

After seven years and seven months, a wallet that took part in Ethereum’s initial coin offering (ICO) in 2016 and stayed dormant since then, has finally woken up.

The address moved one ether (ETH) to a new address roughly 13 hours ago, according to a tweet by on-chain intelligence firm Lookonchain, marking its first transaction. The cryptocurrency community believes it is a test transaction. However, no further transactions have been performed by the ICO wallet since then.

• At the time of the ICO, the wallet received 2,365 ETH, valued at around $733.51, as the token sale price was $0.311. However, the assets are worth roughly $4.36 million at the current market price of ETH, signaling nearly 600,000% ROI.
• The ICO participant has joined the list of previously inactive addresses that have suddenly come to life and started transferring their assets. In December, two Ethereum addresses that had been dormant since October 2018 made significant transfers of 22,982 ETH for the first time.
• Aside from Ethereum, there have also been reports of dormant Bitcoin (BTC) addresses becoming active again.
• One striking example is a wallet that received 6,071 BTC in 2013 and recently sent 2,071 BTC to a new address. At the time of the initial transaction, the value of one BTC was $663, and the total worth of the wallet was over $4 million.
• However, by April 2023, when it was reactivated, the value of the stash had skyrocketed to $176 million, and $60 million worth of assets were transferred out.
• In March 2022, another Bitcoin address was activated for the first time in 11 years. The address held 489 BTC worth merely $50 in 2010. By the activation date, the assets were worth over $20 million.