ETH Linked to Ethereum ICO Participant, Vitalik Buterin Is on the Move

Old digital money is on the move per on-chain data.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin deposited 600 Ethereum worth around $1 million, to Coinbase on Monday, according to data from Ethereum network explorer, Etherscan.

Another dormant Ethereum address, which had bought ETH during Ethereum’s initial coin offering (ICO) in 2014, moved 191 ETH worth around $320,000 on August 20 to another address, according to Etherscan data.

The Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit organization responsible for developing and promoting the Ethereum platform, conducted the ICO between July 22, 2014, and September 4, 2014.

The Foundation raised a total of $18.3 million for 60 million ETH, at $0.305 per coin.

Analysts have also confirmed with Decrypt that it is unlikely that this second address belongs to Vitalik.

That address the ICO participant sent their ETH to later bought Unitbot (UNIBOT) and ApeCoin (APE) tokens.

Vitalik moves ETH

On-chain analytics firm Nansen confirmed the 600 ETH transfer from Vitalik’s wallet to Coinbase with Decrypt, adding that Vitaliak sent “a test transaction of 0.1 ETH two days ago.”

His transfer only accounts for around 0.01% of Ethereum’s daily average trading volumes over 30 days of $6.3 billion, per CoinGecko data.

On-chain analytics firm Arkham data shows that Vitalik has moved around $3.6 million in ETH to exchanges including Kraken, Gemini, and Coinbase since the start of the year.

Nansen analysts said that the previous transfers have “typically been to Kraken.”

Today’s transfer to Coinbase takes Vitalik’s total amount transferred to the exchange at $4.6 million.

The last time Vitalik transferred ETH to exchanges was between June 5 and 7, following which ETH witnessed a 14% drop, according to Coingecko data.

However, in March, Vitalik’s transfer on exchanges coincided with the local bottom of around $1,400, suggesting that the effect on price after these movements is merely coincidental.

Movement of ICO Participant wallet

Following yesterday’s transfer, the address that received tokens from the ICO participant bought 100 UNIBOT tokens worth around $15,000, 10,000 APE tokens worth approximately $15,300, and transferred 15.8 ETH worth just over $26,000 to HitBTC exchange, data from Arkham shows.

The UNIBOT token is the native token for Unibot, a Telegram bot linked to the Uniswap exchange on Ethereum.

ApeCoin (APE) is an ERC-20 token based on the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT that acts as the governance token within the ApeCoin DAO ecosystem.

The entity also transferred 1.5 ETH to U.S.-based crypto exchange Kraken. The remaining 152 ETH are sitting in another account.

However, these are not isolated events.

A month ago, an ICO whale address transferred $116 million worth of ETH to Kraken. In May, another Ethereum whale moved 4,032 ETH worth $7.4 million to the proof-of-stake contract.