Vitalik Buterin, one of the most recognized figures in the cryptocurrency space and co-founder of Ethereum (ETH) said that the Ethereum Foundation sold around 70,000 ETH in January 2017. At that time, Ethereum was traded close to its top price of $1,400. That means that the Foundation was able to secure almost $100 million in funds for the coming years.
Buterin Says Ethereum Foundation Sold 70,000 ETH in 2018
During a conversation with Eric Weinstein, the managing director of Thiel Capital, he explained he convinced the Ethereum Foundation to sell 70,000 ETH at the top of the market, something that helped the whole foundation move forward with the different plans that it had in mind.
Bitcoin (BTC) and the whole cryptocurrency market experienced a massive bull run at the end of 2017. In January 2018, several ERC-20 and Ethereum were able to reach their all-time highs. At that time, ETH was able to hit $1,400 before it fell to under $100 less than a year later.
At the same time, Vitalik Buterin was able to sell 30,000 ETH worth $22 million at that time as well. However, he did so at the end of December, before ETH reached $1,400. In the last three months, the Ethereum Foundation has also decided to get $1.5 million in funding by selling some of their ETH, according to TrustNodes.
It is worth mentioning that the Ethereum Foundation has decided to change its business strategy and stop funding some developers. Some of these coders worked at Ethereum for a long period of time but they are not receiving funds anymore.
Currently, Ethereum is being traded around $142 and it has a market capitalization of $15.45 billion. That means that the digital currency is almost 90% down from its all-time high and there are no signs the cryptocurrency will eventually start recovering part of its price.
According to Chris Burniske, partner at Placeholder VC, explained that securing $100 million to fund future Ethereum development is a good treasury management decision.
Securing $100M USD to fund future #Ethereum development. Sounds like good treasury management to me. https://t.co/n4cJG8H3j6
— Chris Burniske (@cburniske) December 15, 2019
Back in 2017 and the beginning of 2018, there have been many Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) that gathered a large number of funds and that decided not to sell these tokens. Eventually, they were affected by the bear market in 2018 and many of them stopped operating.
