Long-term Ether holders have shown increased activity in the latter half of the year as Ether approached its all-time highs, with many “ICO-era” holders “awakening” after years of inactivity.
September experienced two substantial spikes in long-term holder activity, marking the most significant increases since this year’s peak in July, according to Santiment’s analytics platform, Sanbase’s age consumed metric.
This metric quantifies the total amount of Ether (ETH) changing addresses, multiplied by the time since its last movement. A spike signals a large volume of aged Ether moving, as per its definition.
The metric reached a spike of 502 million around September 6 and then 603 million at the end of September, the highest figures outside of July’s peak of approximately 804 million.
“ICO-era” Ether holders are awakening
The increase in long-term Ether holder activity is also drawing in some of Ether’s early investors.
On Wednesday, a whale that acquired 20,000 Ether during the Ethereum ICO transferred 1,500 tokens to the crypto exchange Kraken after eight years of dormancy, per Nansen.
When originally obtaining the tokens, the 20,000 Ether cost just over $6,000, but since then, its value has appreciated significantly to over $78 million.
Two additional ICO holders made moves in August and September
Another Ethereum ICO participant, who received a total of 1 million Ether in three distributions of 200,000, 300,000, and 500,000 to three separate wallets during the ecosystem’s early days, also began to move in September, shifting 150,000 Ether to a new wallet for staking.
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This whale invested a total of $310,000 during the ICO to acquire its Ether, which has appreciated to over $3.9 billion in value.
Additionally, a smaller holder executed their first action in a decade during August, transferring 0.001 Ether as a test transaction. In contrast to the whales, this holder only purchased 158 Ether in the ICO for $49.
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