Vitalik Buterin dumps $7m Ethereum after ‘mild austerity’ vow as price plunges

Vitalik Buterin has sold nearly $7 million worth of tokens from his personal wallet over the past three days.

And he’s not done selling yet, according to data from blockchain analytics platform Arkham, which shows he continues to swap five-figure sums worth of Ethereum for stablecoins.

The stream of selling comes a week after Buterin said that the Ethereum Foundation is “entering a period of mild austerity” over the next five years to achieve its goals.

“For this reason, I have just withdrawn 16,384 ETH, which will be deployed toward these goals over the next few years,” the 32-year-old co-founder of Ethereum said on January 30.

Of that sum, he has sold over 3,000 since his message.

Those goals include cementing the $252 billion blockchain’s status as a “scalable world computer” and ensuring long-term stability.

The Ethereum Foundation did not immediately respond to questions regarding how that money would be spent to achieve this goal.

Ethereum has crashed 30% over the past week and is trading at just over $2,000 at the time of reporting.

It is now down 58% from its all-time high of $4,950 set in August, amid a cryptocurrency industry downturn that has wiped out $2 trillion in value.

“To this end, my own share of the austerity is that I am personally taking on responsibilities that might in another time have been ‘special projects’ of the Ethereum Foundation,” he said.

Buterin’s pet projects list includes open-source software and hardware, such as financial applications, operating systems, secure hardware, and biotech.

“I am also exploring secure decentralized staking options that will allow even more capital from staking rewards to be put toward these goals in the long term,” he said.

New vision

On Tuesday, Buterin also cast doubt on Ethereum’s relationship with layer 2 networks such as Arbitrum and Base.

Billions of dollars in value are locked up in these layer 2 networks, DefiLlama data shows.

“Ethereum itself is now scaling directly on layer 1, with large planned increases to its gas limit this year and the years ahead,” Buterin said.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.