- Ethereum price tanks due to mass sell-off
- Ether down by 30 percent in one week
- Buterin’s wallets remain intact amidst all the going ons
Word on the grapevine is Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin has lost over $450M in less than a year and may now be worth only $37M having fallen from $500M. The Ethereum community is suspicious of ETH whales which might be responsible for crashing ether to below $115.
Crypto Market in a Free-fall
Ethereum prices, similar to all other leading cryptocurrencies are in a free-fall, the market is in the red and this has left many HODLers speechless as it seems the expected breakout is going the wrong way. As all leading coins experience double-digit drops, only XRP seems to have lost only 8 percent to come to dethrone Ethereum from its well-cemented second position to sit behind Bitcoin (BTC).
According to Etherscan’s records, the Genesis wallet sent 380,000 ETH to a wallet which almost immediately sent two huge transactions in effect emptying out the previous addresses. The receiving wallet is suspected to belong to an anonymous whale account that’s holding over 454,000 ETH tokens. Etherscan also recorded another suspected whale wallet doing a transaction worth 115,000 ETH. Interestingly, the wallets are not doing their transactions directly with exchanges.
Pundits see the move as a sign of capitulation and loss of trust in Ethereum considering that the ETH in question seems to have been part of a pre-mined stash that saw critics point fingers on the Ethereum project.
The prevailing market crash has seen ETH’s price fall and losing over 30 percent in two weeks having hovered around $200.00 for several weeks down to $113.85 last week and to around $115.86 at the time of writing.
There are expectations that ETH might be on its way to double-digit prices. The token has been weighed down by the fate of several tokens that are viewed with skepticism following the stance of regulators and the risk of crackdowns on ICO projects, where ETH has almost always played the role of a utility coin, adding to its price depression, combining with high volatility to hurt prices even further.
While all this is going on. Vitalik Buterin’s wallet has remained intact, with his 365,003.48 ETH remaining untouched for many days. Buterin is known to discourage speculative trading and doesn’t comment on high ETH prices. The last time the ETH founder touched his wallet seems to be in April 2016 when he openly sold 25% of the Ethereum balance he once held, leading to a barrage of criticism he didn’t have faith in the project he created.
