Aave founder offloads $8.3M in ETH as price falls under $2K

The blockchain lending network lead who recently bought a property in the UK has sold some of his ethereum holdings, as the market continues shedding a year’s worth of profits in just a week.

Aave founder Stani Kulechov offloaded about 4,503 Ether late Thursday, as the token slid below the $2,000 mark. The sales were flagged by crypto market transaction-watching account Lookonchain, citing Arkham Intelligence data, which confirmed the stash was sold at about $1,857 a coin.

The address that Arkham has attributed to Kulechov shows the ether coins were sold through several swaps routed through CoW Protocol’s settlement contract.

At the time of this publication, the second largest coin by market cap was trading around $1,963. That price level is a small price correction that places ETH above the values Kulechov sold his coins.

Aave boss sells ETH in snowy crypto winter

According to Arkham Intelligence records, an address beginning 0x8036e34d… believed to belong to Kulechov sent wrapped Ether (WETH) into “CoW Protocol: Settlement” in at least five chunks within the last three hours of Thursday night.

The transfers were followed by near-matching inflows of USDC back to the same wallet. This indicates that Kulechov was executing swaps. The largest leg in the series shows 2.084K WETH sent to the CoW settlement address about six hours before Lookonchain’s report. 

Another tranche involved 1.012K WETH routed into the settlement contract, followed by 1.884 million USDC flowing back, with additional legs of 792.509 WETH swapped for 1.462 million USDC, and 479.437 WETH for 884,681 USDC.

A separate transfer in the same Arkham view shows 6.349K ETH, worth about $12.21 million, moving from a “Gnosis Safe Proxy (0xe70)” into the 0x8036e34d… wallet. The deposit appeared eight hours before the screenshot. This was shortly before the sequence of WETH-to-USDC swaps.

The five WETH outflows add up to 4,503.6 WETH, executed notionally around $8.36 million for the combined trades.

AAVE holdings lead Stanley Kulechov’s portfolio 

According to the Aave CEO’s portfolio on Arkham, AAVE is the leading asset by value. The address currently holds 84.034K coins valued at about $8.98 million, with the token priced at around $106.83.

Ether exposure in the same portfolio screen was comparatively small after the sales. The wallet showed 20.151 ETH valued at $39,570, with ETH marked at $1,963.79.

The stablecoin balances shown were modest relative to the swap totals that moved through the address. The wallet listed 17.477K USDT, and 10.767K USDC.

Several smaller altcoin positions were also displayed in the portfolio, including 746.487 ILV worth $2,760, 15.023 million CULT for $2,550, 10.819K THALES valued around $1,620, and 11.71K BZZ totaling $1,490.

Kulechov’s profile has a total value of around $9.06 million, with a shown change of -13.44% in the last seven days, or -$25.89K.

Ether accounted for the bulk of that decline in the portfolio. On January 30, ETH was shown at $3,001.66 with 20.08 ETH valued at $60.27K. By Friday, ETH was shown at $2,142.53 with the same 20.08 ETH amounting to $43.02K.

The net-change column recorded a $17.25K drop to ETH alone, matching a price move of -$859.13, or -28.62%, with holdings unchanged. The balance is losses counted during the asset’s price drop before Kulechov decided to cash out.

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