Ethereum Presale Investor Sells 500 ETH ($627K) After Seven Years

An old Ethereum wallet that held 500 ETH for seven years has recently moved its entire balance into a separate account. Despite the decrease in the price of Ether, the user still saw a gain of $627,000.

The 500 ETH was obtained during a presale before Ethereum’s initial coin offering in 2015. According to public data, the Ethereum ICO sold tokens for $0.3 per ETH, representing a $150 investment for 500 ETH. Noteworthily, presale investors typically buy assets for a lower price, suggesting a significantly lower investment.

Meanwhile, ever since the wallet address claimed the 500 ETH, it had been completely dormant for the past 7 years and 3 months. With the current transfer, virtually all the amount of ETH transferred represents gains for the wallet owner.

Who Owns the Wallet?

The total ETH was transferred to William Sutanto, the co-founder of Indonesia-based crypto trading platform Indodax. Sutanto noted in a tweet that he was moved to check his “old email” after the news went viral that Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s inventor, had supposedly moved 3,000 ETH.

confirmed! after reading @VitalikButerin sold 3000 ETH, i checked my old email just for fun. Surprisingly, there’s still 500 presale ETH I haven’t claimed. it takes a half day manually bruteforce the password ???? https://t.co/828Z28sqK5

— William Sutanto (@WilliamSutant0) November 15, 2022

After gaining access to the account, Sutanto moved the entire ETH holdings into his Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domain account – williamsutanto.eth. As revealed by on-chain data, the Indodax co-founder continues to hold the freshly transferred ETH in his main account.

HODLing Pays Off!

This is not the first time an old wallet address would transfer funds after being dormant for a long time. In late August, an old Bitcoin wallet address transferred its entire holdings of 5,000 BTC into a separate account. Before then, it had been inactive for the past nine years. By holding on to the BTC for a long time, the user was able to garner profits worth $96 million.

In May, another Bitcoin account saw massive gains after holding 1,000 BTC for eight-and-a-half years. When the sale was done in 2013, the total BTC was nearly $500,000 BTC. However, the wallet address held $30.3 million, thereby seeing a profit worth 64 times its actual purchase.

In March, a dormant BTC address that bought BTC worth about $355,000 in 2013 was reactivated. Upon its return, the wallet address recorded a balance of $15.5 million.