On October 17, PeckShield analysts recorded a transfer of 14.93 million USDC to the Gemini exchange from the wallet vitalik.eth, linked to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.
#PeckShieldAlert #vitalik.eth has transferred ~15M $USDC (Multisig Contract 0xf207…D5a3) to #Gemini pic.twitter.com/6FZGKLKg9Z
— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) October 17, 2023
In the community there was speculation that the developer had sold part of his holdings. However, later, Buterin himself clarified the situation on Warpcast.
“If you see a story ‘Vitalik sends XXX ETH to an exchange’, it’s not actually me selling; it’s almost always a donation to a charitable, nonprofit or other project. And the recipient sells, because they need to cover expenses. I haven’t sold ETH for personal gain since 2018,” said Buterin.
A Ethereum Foundation spokesperson told Cointelegraph that the recent transaction was simply signing over funds to a charitable foundation through the multisig-wallet.
In June, Buterin and Polygon head Sandeep Nailwal pledged to allocate $100 million for COVID-19 pandemic research at the Kanro Foundation.
According to on-chain data, the contract associated with the organization had in recent days been receiving confirmations for transfers from vitalik.eth.
Earlier, the Ethereum cofounder deposited 600 ETH worth about $1 million at the Coinbase exchange. A day before the transfer, Buterin closed a position of 251 000 RAI on MakerDAO and withdrew 1,000 ETH (~$1.67 million).
In March, he swapped for ETH coins obtained through airdrops worth about $700,000, crashing the price of some of them.
In September, Buterin sold MakerDAO tokens worth $580,000 after Rune Christensen proposed launching the protocol on Solana.