Ethereum Co-Founder Sells 90,000 ETH: Here's Why He Did It

When 204,000 Ethereum (ETH) moved to different exchanges on Christmas day, the crypto community was left scratching their heads, mystified as to who could have caused such a massive selloff.

The total Ethereum that went on to be cashed out is worth, at today's prices, almost $26 million. It was even linked to the man behind the project himself, Vitalik Buterin.

Out of the 204,000 ETH, though, 90,000 ($11.3 million) was sent to U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, which was traced all the way to another Ethereum co-founder, Jeff Wilcke. According to the cryptocurrency news website BeInCrypto, Wilcke would not have been identified had he not signed up for Ethereum Name Service (ENS) in 2017.

Cointelegraph also notes that in 2016 an account that is funded by the Ethereum Foundation dev wallet transferred a total of 408,000 ETH to a particular ox600 address and in the span of three-plus years showed a regular movement of funds until a sharp decrease on Dec. 25 this year.

The wallet still contains 218,000 ETH ($27.4 million), but the 90,000 that caused the decline went to Kraken.

Wilcke didn't deny his action, and he admitted this through a now-deleted tweet that he will be using the cash for his game.

When something like this happens in the crypto world where someone who owns a large number of cryptos -- which in this case is a co-founder of one the second-largest crypto by market cap -- cashes out, it is usually not a good sign for crypto fans. It doesn't mean that faith for Ethereum plummets as a result of this, but it does project a sense of uncertainty in the face of those who are widely optimistic about the crypto world's prospects. Had this been a Bitcoin whale cashing out a fortune of BTC on Christmas day, the entire market would probably be in a selling frenzy.

But Wilcke has not had any contributions on GitHub for the past nine months. And like what he tweeted about, he is perhaps working on Grid-Games, which is a video game studio that he is a co-founder of according to his profile on the software development platform.

While Wilcke admitted what his purpose was for the 90,000 ETH, the identity of the sellers behind the remaining the 114,000 ETH is still a mystery -- but perhaps some of those sellers were just in a rush for some late Christmas shopping.