Author: Sanqing, Foresight News
Original Title: Vitalik Sold Nearly 20,000 ETH in a Single Month, What's Behind the Founder Leading the Sell-Off?
February 2026, the crypto market continued to slump, with Ethereum experiencing a monthly decline for six consecutive months, with a maximum intra-month drop of nearly 30%. During this period, an address associated with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin executed 532 sell operations. According to Etherscan data, the last sell operation was completed at 19:40 on February 26, with the address accumulating sales of approximately 19,326 ETH.
Image Source: Bitget Market
Three "Transparencies": Advance Notice, Purpose, and Public Execution
Vitalik's plan for this fund movement was announced in advance. On January 30, Vitalik published a long post via his personal X account, announcing that he would withdraw 16,384 ETH (worth approximately $44 million at the time) from his personal wallet and gradually liquidate it.
Image Source: Vitalik's Tweet
He explained that this move was his personal response to the Ethereum Foundation (EF) entering a phase of "mild austerity." The EF plans to reduce its annual spending from 15% of the treasury to 5% over 5 years, focusing more on core protocol development.
Vitalik also detailed the allocation of the funds in his post. The proceeds from this sale will be used to fund open-source projects and public goods, with a focus on privacy technologies (ZK proofs, fully homomorphic encryption FHE, differential privacy), secure hardware, verifiable computation, encrypted communication, local-first software, open-source operating systems, biotech/public health tools, and governance coordination mechanisms. These areas are mostly critical but marginalized sectors following EF's austerity. Vitalik emphasized that this was his personal decision to share the responsibility of EF's austerity.
Furthermore, the entire selling process was fully traceable through on-chain tools. Vitalik used a single address (0xfEB016D0D14AC0Fa6d69199608B0776d007203B2) and executed the sales in small batches via a single protocol (CoW Swap) to minimize market impact.
One "Unexpected": Execution Volume Slightly Higher Than Announced
Despite the high transparency, the execution result slightly differed from the initial announcement. The actual sales volume from Vitalik's address exceeded the previously announced 16,384 ETH, totaling approximately 19,326 ETH sold (an excess of about 2,942 ETH).
This sale began in the early hours of February 3, paused for about 10 days, and resumed on the 22nd, with acceleration occurring mainly in the last two days. Specifically, approximately 4,211.5 ETH were sold on February 5, about 2,283 on the 25th, and about 6,297 on the 26th.
Data Source: Etherscan & Bitget | Note: Data for the 26th is as of the time of the last sell operation
Whether the announced total was only a rough target or if unpublicized changes occurred during execution, Vitalik has not provided further explanation yet.
Vitalik has stated: "Since 2018, I have never sold ETH for personal wealth accumulation. Essentially all proceeds from sales have been used for donations, funding open-source projects, or charitable causes."
Image Source: Vitalik Farcaster Post
Moreover, compared to some project teams quietly offloading tokens, leading to post-factum crashes or trust crises, Vitalik's "open card selling" appears indeed healthier. This ETH sale plan, at least superficially, continues the path of transparency and non-personal profit.
However, objectively speaking, the founder accelerating coin sales at a rebound node during a continuous price decline may deal a blow to community and investor confidence. Market sentiment was already fragile; Vitalik's actions could amplify FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt), even compounding overall bear market pressures, pushing ETH to explore lower levels. In the short term, this may exacerbate selling by holders, affecting Ethereum's rebound trend and ecosystem stability.
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