$2.7B in Dormant Ethereum Presale Holdings Uncovered by KeychainX Study

KeychainX, a Swiss cryptocurrency wallet-recovery firm, has released an on-chain study of the Ethereum presale. The study found that 621 genesis wallets have never sent a single transaction in the twelve years since the sale, holding approximately $2.7 billion worth of ETH at current prices.

The study scanned every presale genesis address and measured how many wallets and how much ETH remain with no outgoing transactions. It was discovered that these dormant wallets hold about 58% of the total dormant ETH, with the top ten largest wallets alone holding approximately $523 million in ETH.

Additionally, the study identified 30 presale wallets that moved for the first time in 2025 and 2026 after roughly a decade of dormancy. These wallets sent a combined total of about $131 million in ETH.

KeychainX reports that it has recovered access to several 2014 presale wallets for their owners during this period, where the wallet file survived but the stored password no longer decrypted it.