Vitalik Buterin Just Sold $33 Million in ETH — What’s Going On?

Jakarta, Pintu News – Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum , has withdrawn most of his ETH holdings.

In the past three days, Buterin is known to have sold around 13,220 ETH, which is worth approximately $33 million. These transactions were made at an average price of approximately $2,497 per ETH, based on on-chain data from blockchain analytics platform Arkham on Thursday, February 5.

To date, Buterin still holds around $40.28 million worth of crypto assets, of which $7 million is Ethereum. As such, the Russian-Canadian computer programmer has cut his direct exposure to ETH by around 80%.

Why is Vitalik selling Ethereum?

The large transfer from Vitalik Buterin’s wallet has caught the market’s attention, especially since the ETH price recently broke through an important consolidation zone on the daily chart in the range of $2,800 and $2,700, triggering one of the sharpest sell-offs since mid-2025.

Read also: Ethereum Crashes to $1,900 — Is a Bearish Trend Taking Over ETH?

However, the situation may not be as bad as it seems. A few days before the sale began, Buterin had made a statement on the X platform, conveying that he intended to reduce some of his personal holdings because the Ethereum ecosystem was facing a period of “mild retrenchment.”

“In the next five years, the Ethereum Foundation will enter a period of mild retrenchment… As such, I have just withdrawn 16,384 ETH which will be used to support these goals in the next few years. I am also exploring secure decentralized staking options, so that more of the proceeds from staking can be allocated towards these goals in the long term,” Buterin wrote.

The cut, about $45 million, is planned to be used to support initiatives such as privacy-protecting technologies, open hardware, and secure and verifiable software. Buterin also emphasized that the distribution of these funds will be done gradually over the next few years.

So, this increased wallet activity is more a part of Buterin’s philanthropic plan to build an open and verifiable tech stack – as he has promised before – than a simple sell-off.

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Reference:

• Coinspeaker. Vitalik Buterin Dumps ETH, DeFi TVL Falls Below $100B. Accessed on February 6, 2026
• Finbold. Is Vitalik Buterin dumping his Ethereum? Accessed on February 6, 2026