- The transferred stash was worth more than a million at press time.
- Buterin’s earlier claims of transfers being related to charity started doing the rounds.
Ethereum [ETH] co-founder Vitalik Buterin moved 500 ETH, worth $1.08 million as of this writing, to crypto exchange Coinbase, fueling speculations in the crypto community about the intention of the transfer.
AMBCrypto scanned on-chain data and noticed movement of 500 ETH from address labeled “vitalik.eth” to a Coinbase custody wallet on 19th December.
Incoming sell-pressure or just charity?
Generally, influential investors or whales moving a large chunk of their stashes to exchanges triggers anxiety among participants.
This is because of the dominant belief that they are likely to be sold off, putting downward pressure on the asset. However, this is not always true.
In the current scenario, Buterin might be using Coinbase’ institutional custody services to secure his holdings or staking them to collect rewards.
Amidst the suspense around the real intentions behind the moves, an earlier clarification by Buterin started doing the rounds as well.
In a discussion on decentralized social app Warpast some two months ago, he had said,
“If you see an article saying “Vitalik sends XXX ETH to [exchange]”, it’s not actually me selling, it’s almost always me donating to some charity or nonprofit or other project, and the recipient selling because, well, they have to cover expenses.”
Buterin’s explanation came in response to intense speculation following large movements of his Ethereum holdings to centralized exchanges back then.
Did whales liquidate their holdings?
However, the concerns of the ETH holders were not unfounded. At press time, ETH was exchanging hands at $2,209, per CoinMarketCap, with a 24-hour loss of 1.49%.
Ethereum whales were active over the last two days. This was evident as transactions worth more than $1 million spiked, according to AMBCrypto’s observation of Santiment data.
Read ETH’s Price Prediction 2023-24
Moreover. the amount of ETH moving to exchanges also rose in the same time.
When the two indicators were examined together, it appeared that ETH whales did engage in profit-taking, resulting in some sell-pressure for the asset.
Source: Santiment