Investors Spooked Over Massive Ether Transfer from Ethereum Co-Founder

The rumor mill around Ether is beginning to churn once more, after crypto tracking service Etherscan reported a massive transfer on Christmas Day. According to the report, 92,000 ETH (worth $11.2 million at the time) was transferred from an unknown wallet to Kraken, signaling what appeared to be a massive selloff of the asset. Things got worse when ViewBase confirmed that the wallet, which initiated the transfer, had about 300,000 ETH before initiating the transfer, with most of those assets coming from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

The 92k ETH sent to Kraken today originated from a single whale (https://t.co/aA3CmjPDHX), which in turn received most of its ETH from Vitalik Buterin (https://t.co/sem89VwTQf). The whale is likely an ETH dev or VB himself.

— ViewBase (@viewbasecom) December 25, 2019

As the analytics service put it, the assets were transferred by an Ether whale. Its top guesses? An Ether core developer or Buterin himself.

However, a tweet from Grid Games co-founder Jeffrey Wilcke proved otherwise. In his tweet, Wilcke explained that he needed the funds to help fund his game. In addition to his tweet, Etherscan showed that an ETH address with Wilcke’s name moved 90,000 ETH to Kraken as well.

You are right. Nothing goes unnoticed, @jeffehh.

Given that you were awarded so much $ETH, you should use that money to help Ethereum. pic.twitter.com/OARA4etUn1

— Richard (@ricburton) December 26, 2019

Ether Selloffs Have Investors Spooked

This is just the second occurrence of a massive Ether transfer in just as many weeks. Last week, popular asset tracker Whale Alert reported on Twitter that 789,526 ETH (worth about $105.1 million at the time) was moved in a single transaction from the wallets of crypto Ponzi scheme PlusToken to an unknown wallet. 

However, linking this transaction with Buterin itself isn’t surprising. The Russian-Canadian developer has shed off a massive amount of his assets in the past. In a previous interview, he confirmed that he organized a sale of about 70,000 ETH back in 2017, netting himself over $100 million in the process.

The possibility of a selloff is undoubtedly bad, but given how Ether has performed in the past two weeks, a pump and dump could almost be just what the asset needs. Data from Coinmarketcap shows that it’s currently trading up less than 2 percent on the day, and while it remains the top altcoin in the market, its price has been on a steady decline since July. 

Earlier this month, cryptocurrency analyst Andrew Kang threw shade at Ethereum bulls, explaining in a Twitter thread that Ether doesn’t have the adoption levels required to support its price and that the current slump in prices could get worse.

Serious question for ETH bulls – where do you expect additional capital inflows to come from?

Retail? No
Shitcoin funds? No
ETH Maxis? Levered out
Institutions? Definitely not https://t.co/1qOXDH89Ri

— Andrew Kang (@Rewkang) December 17, 2019

Hopefully, things will get better in the new year. Galaxy Digital Assets CEO Ted Jessup recently confirmed that the company would be looking to add support for Ether in 2020, meaning that investors will be able to explore it as well. In turn, the asset could see a price uptick too.