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A long-silent Ethereum ICO wallet suddenly came alive after ten years. Instead of selling, the owner moved all 40,000 ETH into staking.It almost feels like finding an old USB in your drawer that turns out to be worth $120 million and saying, “Let’s stake it.”
According to blockchain data, the owner bought the ETH during Ethereum’s 2015 launch for around $12,000. Today, the same stash is worth about $120 million.
Ethereum ICO wallet (0x2dCA) with 40,000 $ETH($120M) woke up after 10+ years of dormancy — and instead of selling, he staked the $ETH.https://t.co/AreBCXNG4Thttps://t.co/OWpE8REjVw pic.twitter.com/pPZVwkkB1A
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) December 1, 2025
Instead of sending the funds to an exchange, the owner locked everything with staking validators. This is a strong sign of trust from someone who has not touched their wallet since Ethereum’s early days.
This sudden wake-up comes after a few other old wallets started moving large amounts. One wallet that collected 254,908 ETH during the ICO began selling on Nov. 26. First it sold 20,000 ETH. Then it kept selling until only about $9.3 million worth of ETH was left on Saturday.
An #Ethereum ICO participant sold 20,000 $ETH($58.14M) via FalconX again 11 hours ago.
This OG (0x2eb0) received 254,908 $ETH during the ICO(cost $79K, now worth $757M).https://t.co/f0Ob9tqPqc pic.twitter.com/lPQoe0cpEC
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) November 26, 2025
Another early holder who gathered 154,076 ETH in 2017 sent 18,000 tokens to Bitstamp. This wallet has already sold 87,824 ETH at an average price of $1,694.
An Ethereum OG just deposited another 18,000 $ETH($54.78M) into #Bitstamp 8 hours ago.
Since 2017, this OG accumulated 154,076 $ETH($79.7M) at $517 avg, then sold 87,824 $ETH($148.8M) at $1,694 avg.
He still holds 66,252 $ETH($201M) — with total profits of ~$270M.… pic.twitter.com/cSO2BE7Csj
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) November 29, 2025
Back in September 2025, another quiet ICO wallet woke up and moved 150,000 ETH into a new address for staking.
This holder had originally bought one million ETH during the launch phase.
Even with some early wallets selling, the biggest ETH holders are still adding more. Glassnode data shows the top 1 percent of addresses increased their share to 97.6 percent last Wednesday. A year ago, the number was 96.1 percent. Staking is pulling in huge amounts of ETH. The Eth2 Beacon Deposit Contract now holds around 72.4 million ETH worth more than $200 billion. This is about 60 percent of the entire supply, according to Arkham.
Binance holds the second-largest amount with 4 million ETH. BlackRock is third with 3.9 million ETH across its managed addresses. Large moves from old wallets often make people wonder where the market is heading. But in this case, choosing to stake instead of sell looks like a strong sign of belief from one of Ethereum’s earliest users.
Even while some early holders are taking profit during the market pullback, this move sends a simple message: some early believers still trust the long-term journey.
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