Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin reduced his Ether balance by approximately 17,000 ETH in the month after announcing plans to allocate $45 million worth of tokens to privacy projects.
Buterina wallets tracked Arkham held approximately 241,000 ETH in early February before a series of outflows on Tuesday reduced the total balance to 224,000 ETH.
The reduction follows Buterin’s continued sales, including approximately 2,961 Ether worth $6.6 million over a three-day period earlier this month. Onchain analysts reported that has recently accelerated as he has sold $7 million worth of tokens in the last three days.
Arkham Intelligence Data can be seen the ETH sale was routed through the CoW protocol, a decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator, using many smaller swaps rather than one huge trade, a method typically used to minimize market impact.
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Buterin commits $45 million to privacy initiatives
The ETH sell-off comes after Buterin revealed in January that he had set aside 16,384 Ether, or about $45 million, of his personal holdings to fund privacy-preserving technologies, open hardware and secure, verifiable software systems. He said the capital would be rolled out gradually over the coming years as part of a broader focus on open source tools and sovereignty.
Buterin described these efforts as consistent with the Ethereum Foundation entering a period of “mild austerity” while maintaining a technical roadmap. He added that he will personally take on initiatives that the foundation might otherwise pursue, focusing on building a full suite of open source software and hardware to protect both the digital and real-world environments.
“Specifically, we are looking for the existence of a secure and verifiable full stack of open source software and hardware that can protect both our personal lives and the public environment,” he wrote.
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ETH drops 37% in one month
Buterin’s ETH sale coincided with a keen decline in the price of Ether, which has lost more than 37% of its value over the past month, according to CoinMarketCap data. At the time of publication, the token was trading at $1,825.39, down almost 5% from the last day.
The destitute price performance is due to the fact that over 30% of the Ether supply remains locked. Although betting yields have dropped to around 2.8%, demand for validators remains powerful, with a near-record queue to enter and minimal exits. According to to data from DropsTab.
The decline also hit corporate ether bonds challenging. Bitmine Immersion Technologies, one of the largest corporate holders of ETH, is estimated to be incurring billions in unrealized losses as the token has fallen by approximately 60% in six months, falling well below its average purchase price.
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