Two long-dormant bitcoin wallets tied to physical Casascius coins moved a total of 2,000 BTC, worth about $180 million after more than a decade of inactivity.
The coins had been untouched since 2011 and 2012, when bitcoin traded for less than $15 against today’s price of just $90,000. The move was confirmed by a blockchain explorer who traced the addresses.
Casascius coins are physical collectibles containing embedded private keys created by Utah-based entrepreneur Mike Caldwell in 2011. The coins, issued in denominations ranging from 1 to 1,000 BTC, were designed as offline cold storage.
Each coin came with a tamper-proof holographic seal to protect the key underneath. Caldwell stopped producing pre-funded coins in late 2013 after the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) flagged him as an unregistered money transmitter.
The regulatory pressure effectively ended the Casascius project, leaving around 90,000 coins in circulation, most of which contained small amounts of BTC. A handful, just six coins and 16 bars, were minted at 1,000 BTC.
It is unclear whether the recent transfers were sales, internal reorganizations or simply precautions to maintain access. The transfers could be associated with degrading physical components.
In a similar case earlier this year, a user on Bitcointalk who claimed to be the owner of a 100 BTC Casascius bar reported problems importing the key into modern wallets after peeling the hologram. He eventually moved the funds, now worth about $9 million, into hardware storage.
