Ethereum Foundation Sold $100 Million at the Top Says Vitalik Buterin

Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin has stated the Ethereum Foundation (EF) sold 70,000 eth “basically at the top.”

Speaking to Eric Weinstein, a podcaster and the managing director of Thiel Capital, Buterin said:

“I did get the Ethereum Foundation to sell 70,000 eth like basically at the top and that’s doubled our runway now, so it was one good decision that had a lot of impact.”

Ethereum reached a high of $1,400 in January 2018. So if they sold around that price then the 70,000 eth would have been worth $100 million.

Buterin himself sold 30,000 eth, worth at the time $22 million, at the very end of December 2017 which too was basically at the top.

The Ethereum Foundation has seemingly sold a further $1.5 million worth of eth in the past three months, and they’re also stopping funding of some dev teams.

That led to some speculation they might have run out of fiat, but they should have plenty based on a $20 million runway a year.

So raising the question as to why they’re not funding some developers, including some long time coders, with suggestions this is more a policy decision as the managing director wants everyone to apply through a grant to not discriminate between internal and external teams.

The above comments by Buterin were made in the context of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) funding open source development, with the interviewer wondering how Buterin felt about his net-worth crashing as price dived.

He said he was relieved because at the time he did not think crypto had created enough value yet to be worth half a trillion dollars.

The interviewer then asked whether he shorted. Buterin said he did not short, but he persuaded EF to sell quite a bit. He did not mention that he sold quite a bit too just before the crash as did a few other prominent cryptonians like Charlie Lee of Litecoin.

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