In 2011, when Bitcoin was worth only a few dollars, one anonymous user — let's call them 'The Sleeper' — received over 8,000 BTC to their Bitcoin address. Converted to 2025, that's over 500 million dollars. The address was created, coins were received... and that was it. Not a single transaction from it for 12 years. It was as if it had been forgotten.
At some point, the community began to keep an eye on this wallet: every year, articles like 'Will the sleeping giant awaken?' appeared, and blockchain enthusiasts even speculated whether the person owning this wealth was still alive.
And so, in May 2023, the wallet finally 'woke up.' The user transferred all the funds to another address. The internet immediately exploded — speculation began: could it have been someone from Satoshi Nakamoto's circle? Or an early miner who simply lost their keys and miraculously regained access?
But the story took an unexpected turn: within an hour after the transfer, all the funds were sent to a 'multisig' address, known as one of the largest 'black holes' of the blockchain — an address with no private key. This means that recovering these BTC is technically impossible. They have forever vanished into nothing.
Who is this person, why did they stay silent for 12 years, and why did they destroy such wealth — remains a mystery.