Dormant Casascius Physical Bitcoins Trigger 2,000 Bitcoin Transfer Worth $180 Million

COINOTAG reported, citing CoinDesk, that a Casascius physical Bitcoin wallet address has moved 2,000 BTC after a dormancy exceeding 13 years, equating to roughly $180 million at current prices. The last on-chain moves occurred in 2011–2012 when Bitcoin traded below $15, highlighting liquidity considerations for legacy offline storage assets.

Casascius coins were launched in 2011 by Mike Caldwell, embedding a private key and a tamper-evident hologram to enable offline cold storage. Denominations span from 1 BTC up to 1,000 BTC. Production halted in 2013 after FinCEN classified the scheme as an unregistered money transmitter; today an estimated 90,000 units remain, with only a handful—six coins and 16 gold bars—carrying 1,000 BTC each.

The purpose of the latest transfer remains unconfirmed, with possibilities including sale, internal rebalancing, or a security precaution against potential physical material degradation. Earlier this year, a holder of 100 BTC Casascius gold bars moved roughly $9 million to a hardware wallet to ease private-key import into modern wallets.