Vitalik Buterin and ETH Foundation Sell $30 Million in Ethereum As ETH About to Break $2,000

According to data shared by @lookonchain, an analytics platform that tracks large crypto transactions and transfers of “Smart Money” wallets, Vitalik Buterin sent nearly half a million worth of Ethereum to a major exchange.

After he did that, the Ethereum Foundation did the same but transferred a lot more Ethereum to the same platform — nearly $30 million worth of it.

In the meantime, the second largest cryptocurrency, ETH, is trading at the $1,960 level. Santiment on-chain data company believes that ETH is on the cusp of breaking above $2,000.

Buterin and ETH Foundation sell ETH

Lookonchain shared that the vitalik.eth wallet was the first to move 200 Ethereum (worth about $400,000) to the U.S.-based Kraken exchange. Following Buterin’s transaction, the Ethereum Foundation did the same but on a much bigger scale — they shifted 15,000 ETH to Kraken as well.

Together with Buterin’s crypto, that makes $40,000,000 USD in fiat. The second transaction was also noticed and highlighted by the popular crypto tracker Whale Alert.

After vitalik.eth transferred 200 $ETH($396K) to #Kraken, ETH Foundation also transferred 15,000 $ETH($29.7M) to #Kraken.https://t.co/FPVeH3Z8sJhttps://t.co/AHALnpKtxd pic.twitter.com/iLIHghJUIX

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) May 6, 2023

It seems that Buterin just sells Ethereum from time to time in more or less the same amounts. As reported by U.Today earlier, in the middle of February, he sold 210 ETH for roughly $325,000 in the USDC stablecoin. Curiously, that chunk of ETH was also sold on Kraken.

Back then, Ethereum was trading at $1,545.

On March 13, he moved another 200 ETH to Kraken, selling it at the price of $1,656 per coin.

Ethereum on verge of breaking $2,000: Reasons

Santiment data aggregator reported on Friday that ETH had reached an eight-month high in flows to crypto exchanges. The analytics team believes that this may be a sign of an upcoming volatility increase similar to what it was like after the collapse of FTX in early November and the Merge in mid-September.

In a tweet that followed, Santiment added that while “sky-high active deposits” of ETH to exchanges are the highest since November last year, ETH is now showing signs of decoupling from BTC and may be about to break above the $2,000 level.

🚀 Updating our report on #Ethereum‘s sky-high active deposits, exchange addresses interacting on the network is now at its highest level since November, 2021. As expected, $ETH is showing decoupling signs and on the cusp of breaking $2k once again. https://t.co/zYjY7669yj https://t.co/dQlKsTVyt2 pic.twitter.com/2nMXOUGgYC

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) May 5, 2023

Besides, a record amount of ETH was burned at the end of this week, as U.Today reported. That was down to the meme coin season unwrapping at the moment — the majority of meme coins run on Ethereum and so are being actively moved with high ETH fees, providing a great opportunity to burn ETH and decrease the circulating supply.