There has been a lot of Ethereum selling going on lately, and questions are starting to fly around.
A while ago, Ethereum founder, Vitalik Buterin was in the news for allegedly selling millions of dollars worth of ETH within a span of 10 days, via centralized exchanges like Coinbase and OKEx.
According to more recent reports, the Ethereum Foundation itself is doing the same. This time, via a decentralized exchange.
And as it stands, people are starting to ask questions:
Is the Ethereum Foundation having financial difficulties? Is it spending money on some new project? Or is it simply dumping all of its ETH for another reason entirely.
The Ethereum Foundation is a non-profit organization that helps to develop and promote the Ethereum network.
According to recent reports, the foundation recently swapped out a whopping 1,700 ETH for 2.7 million $USDC on Uniswap.
The move by the Ethereum Foundation has raised some eyebrows in the crypto community.
Scopescan was the first to draw attention to this, via a tweet.
According to on-chain data provided by Arkham Intelligence, the Ethereum Foundation transferred 1,700 ETH from its Gnosis Safe Proxy wallet to its regular wallet on October 4th.
What exactly is a Gnosis Safe though?
In detail, a Gnosis Safe is a multi-sig wallet that operates with smart contracts.
This kind of wallet is special, in that it requires a minimal number of people to approve a transaction. So far, Gnosis safes are typically used by DAOs (or Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) to manage their funds securely and transparently.
Data from Arkham shows that right after transferring these funds to its regular wallet, the foundation swapped the 1,700 ETH for 2.7 million USDC on Uniswap five days later on October 9th, as shown by the two transactions above.
Right after the swap, the foundation sent back 494,000 USDC to its regular wallet and then transferred it to its Gnosis Safe again.
As it stands, the remaining assets on the foundation's regular wallet include $502.69M worth of ETH, $40.73K worth of DAI, $8.35K worth of ARB, and $10.18K worth of USDC.
In all, the foundation owns $552,478,983 worth of assets.
So far, the Ethereum Foundation has not come out with an explanation for their actions.
However, the crypto community has reacted as expected, and speculation is starting to fly on Twitter.
Some users have suggested that the foundation might be selling off these tokens to pay its workers. Others say that it is using this money to fund new projects, support new developers and start new projects.
However, the fact that Buterin himself has been selling Ethereum as of late, cannot be swept under the rug
According to Arkham Intelligence, Buterin's transfer of $3.79 million worth of ETH to various exchanges and wallets was only two weeks ago.
As of the time of writing, the Ethereum founder currently holds about 246 ETH, with a total crypto balance of $392,328,000 (in known wallets).
The ETH sell-off by the foundation happened just when Ethereum's price dipped below $1,600.
CoinMarketCap data shows that Ether lost over 4% of its value in the last week, and is currently trading at $1,586 per token.
However, it is important to note that the price decline may have been influenced by several factors, including the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Middle East.
Another way to look at things is through Ethereum's Long/Short Ratio.
According to Coinglass, the bears severely outnumber the bulls over the last 24 hours.
Coinglass data shows that Ethereum's long-short ratio is at 0.84, with the sellers controlling 54% of all trades.
This leaves about 45% of trades open to the buyers.
What is even more disheartening is that this level is the lowest Ethereum has been at in over a month. This shows a lack of confidence in ETH's price action, and that there are now more sellers than buyers.
In all, Ethereum's price action over the next few weeks is still heavily under speculation.
Disclaimer: Voice of Crypto aims to deliver accurate and up-to-date information, but it will not be responsible for any missing facts or inaccurate information. Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile financial assets, so research and make your own financial decisions.