How Much Ethereum Is In Joe Lubin's Pocket?

No one knows how much Joe Lubin holds. Lubin, the founder of Ethereum incubator ConsenSys, on stage at Consensus 2022 cleared that he is not going to reveal that by himself. Once called the “Daddy Warbucks” of Ethereum.

Lubin’s holdings become highly relevant as Ethereum comes close to a multi-year development to transition into a Proof-of-stake consensus algorithm.

Christine Kim, former CoinDesk alumna and the brilliant researcher at Galaxy Digital, is the latest person who asked Lubin about his holdings.

Kim further says that capital has a direct influence on the individuals participating in creating network consensus, participating in building blocks, and proposing transactions. In simple words, Lubin being in the control of the world’s most used blockchain is what is at stake.

Lubin quite “comfortably” reveals on stage that his holdings never even came near half of a percent.

This is in contrast to earlier predictions, according to which Lubin holds the ownership of the total circulating ether supply between 5% and 10%. These figures were cited by Forbes in 2018 while declaring him as the second-richest person in crypto. Gary Gensler, the chairperson at U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission believes that the data is outdated.

Lubin, who is former Goldman Sachs’ vice president of technology and also the founder of a quant hedge fund, is with Ethereum from the start. There are also assumptions that Lubin is most probably one of the principal buyers of ETH during the $18 million initial coin offering (ICO) of the network. He could also be the chief operating officer of Ethereum, having got a lion’s share of the estimated six million ether the Ethereum Foundation distributed to “early project contributors.”

However, there are many complex factors such as the fact that Lubin, in the past five years, has provided funds from his pockets for various Ethereum startups and open-source protocols via the venture studio ConsenSys. It is also likely that Lubin has liquidated ETH for fiat over the years via a committed ecosystem leader.

However, Lubin says that he did nothing to disseminate the tokens, further adding that he hasn’t acquired “any tokens since genesis.” Though Lubin needs to prove these claims by disclosing all his alphanumeric blockchain addresses, which is pretty much similar to someone sharing their banking details. Even though “openness” and “verifiability” are key factors of the digital asset industry, at a personal level perhaps we have no right to ask him that.

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