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Did Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin Short Ethereum? Unraveling A 70,000 ETH Sale

A video has surfaced on social media where Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin revealed he sold 70,000 ETH tokens during its price all-time high. 

Buterin Acknowledges Shorting Ethereum

Crypto community member, MetaMan X, published a video post on X (formerly Twitter), disclosing a conversation where Ethereum Founder, Vitalik Buterin admitted that he had sold about 70,000 ETH tokens, essentially shorting the cryptocurrency during a major all-time high. 

In the podcast with American hedge fund director, Eric Ross Weinstein, Buterin spoke on the price of Ethereum and Bitcoin in 2017. During Ethereum’s previous all-time high in 2017, when the price of ETH rose as high as $1,600 and Bitcoin’s price was up $20,000, Buterin voiced doubts about whether the significant price surge truly aligned with the crypto market’s modest achievements over the years. 

“The crypto space has reached half a trillion dollars, does it deserve it?” Buterin stated. 

When asked if he had shorted Ethereum during the all-time high, Buterin stated that he had convinced the Ethereum Foundation to sell a considerable amount of ETH tokens, and the result of the decision made a huge impact on the cryptocurrency later.

“I did get the Ethereum Foundation to sell 70,000 ETH like basically at the top, and that’s doubled our runway now, so it was one good decision that had a lot of impact,” Buterin said. 

Ethereum price chart from Tradingview.com

Community Worries Over Buterin’s ETH Sell-Offs

Many crypto community members have raised concerns about the multiple ETH transactions said to be conducted by Ethereum’s founder. Recently, Buterin was spotted making a transfer of 100 ETH, worth about $181,000 to Coinbase, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges. 

The motive behind the transaction has sparked curiosity among Ethereum investors and the crypto community. Earlier in August, Buterin was also reported moving 600 ETH worth $1 million to Coinbase. 

However, the Ethereum Founder had publicly clarified in October that he had not sold any ETH tokens for personal gain since 2018. He also stated that most ETH transactions were not him selling, but rather the recipients of his charitable donations selling the ETH tokens. 

The founder has also been caught in controversy over the weekend when Ethereum whistleblower Steven Nerayoff alleged that Buterin was involved in some sort of fraud involving ETH.

Nerayoff says Ethereum is linked to corrupt SEC officials to carry out this fraud which he says is on a larger scale than what happened with FTX. For reference, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has been found guilty of fraud charges after the exchange filed for bankruptcy in 2022 with a $9 billion hold in its balance sheet.

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Real Reason Behind Ethereum Founder’s Massive ETH ‘Sales’ Exposed

A crypto wallet owned by the Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has seen a series of transactional activities lately, piquing the interest of crypto community members at a time when Ethereum selling pressures are rising. 

Following this, Buterin has taken the initiative to address the concerns regarding his recent transfer of digital assets to multiple exchanges. 

Ethereum Co-Founder Discloses Truth Behind Multi-Transfers

In a recent post on Warp Cast, a decentralized social network, Russian-Canadian computer programmer and founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin publicized the real reason behind the latest ETH transfers made via his wallet address. 

Buterin explained to the public that the large-scale ETH transactions that were performed using his wallet were not sold by him. He stated that over the years, he has mostly focused on donating large sums of Ethereum funds to charity organizations and other projects. He further solidified his claims saying that he had not sold ETH for personal profits since 2018. 

“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 projects, and the recipient selling because, well, they have to cover expenses,” Buterin stated. 

Buterin is well-known for his philanthropic acts toward charity organizations and medical interventions. The Ethereum co-founder made headlines in 2021, after donating $1 billion worth of SHIB tokens to a COVID-19 relief fund in India. 

Additionally, in February 2023, Buterin donated $150,000 to Anka Relief to fund a crypto aid project that would support Türkiye after its recent earthquake experiences.

Although there have been many proofs of Buterin’s propensity to donate to multiple charities, the crypto community has remained skeptical and vigilant, relentlessly monitoring the Ethereum founder’s cryptocurrency activities, as well as these recent high-value ETH transactions. 

Ethereum price chart from Tradingview.com (ETH founder Vitalik Buterin)

Spokesperson Reveals $15 Million ETH Transfer From Kanro Charity

According to data from PeckShield Alert, a blockchain security and auditing firm, Vitalik Buterin recently made a large-scale transaction of $15 million USDC to the Gemini Exchange. 

This transaction in question is among the list of recent transfers associated with the Ethereum founder. These movements have prompted both curiosity and concern in the crypto community, as observers attempt to determine the underlying motive behind Buterin’s transactions.

A report from Cointelegraph said an Ethereum Foundation Spokesperson has clarified the details behind the lofty transaction. According to the Spokesperson, the $15 million USDC transfer was only executed under Buterin’s Ethereum Name Service (ENS) and not from his wallet address. 

The spokesperson also supposedly confirmed that the funds were from a transfer made by a charity multi-sig wallet, Kanro, which is closely linked to Buterin to sponsor a grant.

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Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin Reveals The Challenges Of The Network

The Ethereum blockchain is notable for its smart contract functionality and various other things. However, many might not be conversant with the challenges the network encounters. In a recent interview, Ethereum’s founder, Vitalik Buterin, revealed the biggest of them all.

Ethereum’s Biggest Challenge

Speaking with CNBC, Buterin mentioned that the biggest challenge that the “Ethereum ecosystem” faces is ensuring that it builds products that provide value to its users. According to him, the last decade was test-running, but now Ethereum needs to provide utility.  

Ethereum is known to host some of the biggest decentralized applications (dApps), including prominent decentralized exchanges (DEXs) like Uniswap, Curve Finance, and Sushiswap. The network has also grown massively to the extent that several Ethereum layer-2 networks have sprung up in a bid to scale the network.

Despite this, it seems that Buterin believes that there is more to be done, even as Ethereum has asserted itself as the go-to network for dApps and other decentralized solutions. Meanwhile, ETH, its native token, is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap. 

Buterin also spoke about how cryptocurrencies enjoy greater use in less-developed countries as people use crypto tokens to make payments and for savings. 

Cryptocurrencies have long been touted as a hedge against inflation, and it would seem that crypto is being put to use where it is needed most. A recent report by Chainalysis showed that the highest-ranked countries for crypto adoption are being plagued with a devaluing fiat currency.  

The Ethereum founder also stated that centralized entities like Binance need to take a back seat for crypto adoption to move forward. While he appreciates these entities’ role in growing the crypto industry, he believes crypto needs to become more decentralized. 

His reason for saying this isn’t far-fetched as he noted that these entities are vulnerable to “both pressure from the outside and to themselves being corrupted.” Truly, centralized entities have taken many hits this past year, which has had far-reaching consequences on the industry. 

Last year, one of the biggest crypto exchanges, FTX, collapsed, which had several ripple effects on the crypto industry and market. Meanwhile, the two largest crypto exchanges by trading volume, Binance, and Coinbase, are currently embroiled in legal battles against the SEC.

Ethereum price chart from Tradingview.com (Vitalik Buterin)

The Future Of Ethereum

Last year, Ethereum transitioned from a proof-of-work consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake following the Merge. Buterin stated this move has made the network more decentralized as it is “harder to shut down” than a proof-of-work network. 

He also banished the idea that the network was heavily reliant on him, which many had identified as a weakness as the government could easily go after him to clamp down on the network. 

Related Reading: What The Drop In Spot And Derivatives Volumes Means For The Price Of Bitcoin

According to him, Ethereum has grown to become independent of him and the Ethereum Foundation. He points out how several independent applications on the blockchain have taken the workload off him and made the network more autonomous.  

As to Ethereum’s future plans and projects, he said that the network is focused on privacy and scaling with the help of zero-knowledge (ZK) rollups. ZK rollups are layer-2 scaling solutions that help scale the Ethereum network by moving computation off-chain, thereby reducing the computing workload on the network. It also promotes privacy, as one can verify transactions without knowing what it is about. 

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The Protocol: The CFTC Is Cracking Down on Crypto

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission placed a trio of decentralized crypto platforms into its crosshairs last week. An aggressive set of charges from the CFTC – which zeroed in on how the trading platforms handle certain kinds of third-party token swaps – contrasted with the regulator’s more lenient image.