Vitalik Buterin, one of the founders of Ethereum, has denied allegations that he was selling large amounts of ether for personal gain. Buterin claimed that he sold his Ethereum tokens to support various cryptocurrency projects and other charitable endeavors.
Here’s Why Ethereum Founder Transferred $2 Million in Ethereum
On Friday, August 30, blockchain data tracker Lookonchain open That Buterin transferred 800 ETH (worth about $2 million) to a multi-signature wallet. This recipient address then exchanged 190 ETH for 477,000 USDC shortly after.
In the post on the X platform, Lookonchain also noted that Buterin moved 3,000 ETH (equivalent to over $8 million) to the same multi-signature address on August 9. This was the level of on-chain activity seen from the Ethereum co-founder in the past few weeks.
This latest transfer prompted one member of the crypto community on X to accuse Buterin of ignoring the recent ETH transfers. Another crypto community then responded, saying it wouldn’t be wrong for the Ethereum co-founder to make some profit by reducing his ETH holdings.
However, Buterin She replied In response to this post supporting X, claiming that he did not sell any ETH for profit, the cryptocurrency founder said:
I have not sold or retained the proceeds since 2018. All sales have been to support various projects that I believe are valuable, both within the Ethereum ecosystem and broader philanthropy (e.g. biomedical R&D).
Buterin received more support from the online cryptocurrency community after the revelation, with some members encouraging the Ethereum co-founder to spend some of his assets on luxury.
How much ether does Buterin own?
In a post on Reddit three years ago, Buterin said: It has been revealed. That all of the ether he owned (11.9 million ETH at the time) came from the pre-mining period, from which he obtained about 700,000 ETH.
Buterin's interaction with a Reddit user | Source: Reddit
For context, pre-mining It can be likened to initial coin offerings (ICOs), where founders, developers, and early investors are rewarded with a percentage of the tokens.
According to blockchain intelligence firm Arkham, Buterin currently owns about 240,000 ETH (worth about $1.06 billion). This current figure is about 423,000 ETH less than the initial tokens the Ethereum co-founder received.
At the time of writing, Ethereum’s price has dropped below $2,500, reflecting a 1.9% decline over the past 24 hours. Meanwhile, the altcoin’s price has fallen by more than 10% over the past week, according to data from CoinGecko.
The price of ETH slips below the $2,500 mark on the daily timeframe | Source: ETHUSDT chart on TradingView
Featured image by Getty Images/Michael Ciaglo, chart by TradingView