Vitalik Buterin Dumps More ETH as Ethereum ETFs Record $80M in Outflows

The Co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, has continued to sell more of his ETH holdings as the token continues to decline in price. This also comes as institutions continue to cash out on their exchange-traded funds.

Vitalik Buterin’s ETH Sales Grow as Ethereum ETFs Bleed

According to data retrieved by Lookonchain, Buterin has been selling his coins rapidly. In fact, over the last three days alone, Buterin’s wallets have sold 2,900 ETH worth $6.6M at an average price of $2,228 per coin.

The co-founder has been moving around tokens from his portfolio for the past week. As CoinGape reported, Vitalik Buterin withdrew over 16,000 ETH tokens at a go.

However, experts suggest that the withdrawal is tied to funding for the projects on the network. Buterin’s ETH fund movements have further led to bearish sentiment as the Ethereum price continues to fall.

These new sales also come as Ethereum ETFs reported fresh outflows. According to SoSoValue data, the funds reported $79.48 million in outflows at the end of yesterday’s trading. BlackRock’s ETHA saw the highest withdrawal of $58.95 million, and Fidelity’s FETH followed with $20.53 million.

Institutional selling has also continued to grow in the market. For example, Trend Research has also been selling off its tokens to make loan repayments. The firm has sold over 92,000 tokens over the past week amid a $4o0 million loss in its portfolio.

Apart from Vitalik Buterin dumping ETH, major institutions are dumping Bitcoin. The Government of Bhutan has been moving its Bitcoin holdings after months of inactivity in its wallets. The movement of funds has been recorded to various trading firms after the price of Bitcoin dipped below $71,000.

Data recorded by the on-chain data platform Arkham shows that over 184 BTC, valued at approximately $14 million, has been transferred by Bhutan wallets in the last 24 hours.

What’s Next For the Ethereum Price?

The crypto has been trying to recover towards $2,300 after experiencing one of its sharpest drawdowns of the year. At press time, the coin is trading around $2,131, with a 24-hour range of $2,066-$2,174 and daily volume of close to $48 billion.

The decline in ETH’s value also comes as Vitalik Buterin reconsiders the use of layer-2 networks on the blockchain. Buterin’s argument was that the scaling of the mainnet is currently fast enough. He also said some L2s cannot be trusted to live up to the standard of the Ethereum network.

Notably, many investors are still waiting for the implementation of the Ethereum Fusaka upgrade on the network in the hopes that it revives the token’s value. It also goes without saying that market fundamentals would have to align for any notable change.