While the cryptocurrency market is still reeling from the bankruptcies of U.S. banks, the creator of ethereum continues to transact on its own network. This week, Vitalik Buterin transferred 900 ETH, about $7.8 million, from his own wallet and exchanged some of it for USDC.
Three of them went into Kraken wallets. The first one cost only 1 ETH and was sent last Monday (6th) as a form of testing. On Tuesday (7), Buterin sent 199 ETH, and on Monday (13) another 200 ETH.
Thus, the amount sent to Kraken amounted to 400 ETH, or about 3.5 million Brazilian reals, but the ultimate purpose of these transactions is difficult to know.
Another 500 ETH (4.3 million reais) was sent to the decentralized exchange, which gives us more clues about Vitalik Buterin’s intentions, as detailed below.
Vitalik Buterin is trying to cash in on the stablecoin crisis
Vitalik Buterin converted 500 ETH into Wrapped Ether (WETH) as the stablecoin USDC lost its USD backing after revealing exposure to Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). In addition to being pegged to the price of ETH, the token also has the ERC-20 standard, which means it can be used in DeFi protocols and decentralized exchanges.
Ethereum creators then used the token to mint a stablecoin called the Rai Reflex Index (RAI). In total, Buterin minted 150,000 RAI, equivalent to $420,000.
Vitalik Buterin converts ETH to WETH and wedges stablecoin RAI. Source: Ether Scan.
Summarizing the flow of subsequent transactions, Buterin finally bought slightly more than $400,000 USDC on Saturday (11th) as the stablecoin lost the support of the U.S. dollar.
Ethereum founder bought stablecoin that lost parity with dollar. Source: Ether Scan.
That is, while some terrified investors dumped USDC, the founder of Ethereum thought Circle’s stablecoin would return to $1 and took the opportunity to pocket some money.
However, the trade appears to be losing Vitalik Buterin. After all, after the stablecoin returned to the $1 level on Monday (13th), he had $400,000 left in his wallet, compared to Ethereum’s 17% appreciation over the same period.
That said, things would be easier and more profitable if Buterin kept his ETH in his wallet. Another point is the fee paid. In one of the transactions, the creator of Ethereum paid $200 (1,050 reais) for the exchange.
money available for donation
While the ETH-to-USDC swap happened just as the second-largest stablecoin in the market lost parity with the U.S. dollar, the move may have something to do with some future donations.
After all, Vitalik Buterin sold several memecoins last week for over 440 ETH. In other words, he may convert these funds into USDC and then donate them to an institution, just like he sold Shiba Inu before and donated 1 billion US dollars to a company in India.
Finally, while on-chain transactions are easily verifiable due to the transparency of the blockchain, the 400 ETH sent to Kraken does the opposite. However, everything suggests that Buterin also converted this amount into USDC to take advantage of the drop.
Source of information: Compiled from LIVECOINS by 0x Information.Copyright belongs to the author, without permission, may not be reproduced