Vitalik said he has never sold ETH for personal gain, we took stock of his personal and charitable wallets

Vitalik Denies Personal Gain from ETH Sales, Peek into Personal and Charitable Wallets Revealed

Author: The Block，Yogita Khatri

Translation: Jordan, LianGuaiNews

As the co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin’s every move is always highly anticipated, and his wallet address dynamics have also become a “reference” for investors in the cryptocurrency industry to gauge market sentiment, sometimes even causing market reactions and impacting cryptocurrency prices.

However, on October 18th, Vitalik Buterin clarified on social media, saying, “If you see an article saying ‘Vitalik sent *** ETH to a certain exchange,’ it’s actually not me selling. I have made donations to certain charities, non-profit organizations, or other projects, and these selling transactions are made by the recipients of the donations. Because they need to pay some fees. But since 2018, I haven’t sold any ETH for personal gain.”

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However, Vitalik Buterin did not disclose which charities, non-profit organizations, or other projects are selling the ETH he donated, but he does indeed have his own charity organization called Kanro (Vitalik Charity). In order to avoid misunderstanding in the crypto community that Vitalik Buterin is using his charity organization to “cash out,” we have found the wallet address of Kanro to investigate further.

How much money is in Kanro (Vitalik Charity)? Has ETH been sold?

In June of this year, Vitalik Buterin disclosed his charitable entity Kanro on social media, with the aim of making contributions to the fight against Covid-19 and other pandemics. At that time, he announced that he would invest $100 million through Kanro in Covid-19-related research projects and also publicly revealed Kanro’s wallet address information.

Data analysis platform Arkham’s tracking data shows that approximately four months ago, crypto assets worth $100 million were transferred to the Kanro address (which coincides with the time when Vitalik Buterin pledged to provide $100 million in donations), as shown in the figure below, including:

• Approximately 90 million USDC
• 3.724 million MVRS
• 777 LKT
• 1000 MTV

According to on-chain transaction records, Vitalik Buterin did indeed transfer ETH to Kanro, but only 0.01 ETH, so it is likely that this was done for testing, verification, or other purposes, and Kanro subsequently transferred the 0.01 ETH back to Vitalik Buterin.

However, just a week ago, Kanro’s wallet address had funds flowing out, with over 15 million USDC transferred through three transactions to a Gnosis Safe multi-signature wallet address starting with “0xf20”.

Subsequently, the USDC was transferred to three addresses in Coinbase and Gemini cryptocurrency exchanges, as shown in the image below:

• Transferred to Coinbase (0x572) – 248,990 USDC
• Transferred to Coinbase (0x060) – 249,990 USDC
• Transferred to Gemini (0xf67) – 14,934,000 USDC

Currently, the total value of the remaining crypto assets held by Kanro (Vitalik Charity) entity is approximately $75 million, including about 74,567,000 USDC, 1,000 MTV, and 3,724,000 MVRS. However, the ETH balance held by this charity entity is shown as zero, as shown in the image below:

Therefore, technically speaking, as Vitalik Buterin said, he “has never sold ETH for personal gain”.

How much ETH does Vitalik Buterin currently own personally?

Vitalik Buterin co-founded Ethereum in 2015. In October 2018, Vitalik Buterin publicly stated his ETH holdings on social media. He stated that he does not hold the claimed 900,000 ETH and his personal net worth has never reached $1 billion. However, he does own approximately 0.9% of the total ETH supply at that time, which was around 7.5 million ETH. This means Vitalik Buterin personally holds about 675,000 ETH.

According to Simon Cousaert, the data director at blockchain media The Block, based on Vitalik Buterin’s publicly known wallet addresses, he should currently hold around 250,000 ETH, which is valued at approximately $390 million based on the latest prices. Simon Cousaert also added that over the past few years, Vitalik Buterin has sent around 205,000 ETH to exchanges through these public addresses. However, it should be noted that Vitalik Buterin may hold ETH in undisclosed wallet addresses or have sent it to other trading parties.

According to the analysis by The Block Pro in the above image, Vitalik Buterin has sent approximately 30% of his total ETH holdings, about 208,000 ETH, to exchanges, claiming that these ETH are intended for donations and other purposes.

As a co-founder of Ethereum, although Vitalik Buterin holds a large amount of ETH, he is unlikely to “dump” them for cash in a short period of time like Rug Pull project teams do. On the other hand, Vitalik Buterin’s role in the entire Ethereum ecosystem is gradually becoming “decentralized” as the development and innovation of Ethereum is now being maintained and driven by a large community of developers, contributors, supporters, and users. So even if Vitalik Buterin occasionally sells some ETH, it will not have a significant impact on the long-term development of the Ethereum ecosystem.

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