Author: Sanqing, Foresight News
Original title: Vitalik dumped nearly 20,000 Ethereum in a single month. What are the reasons behind the founder leading the sell-off ?
In February 2026, the crypto market continued its downturn, with Ethereum experiencing its sixth consecutive month of decline, reaching a maximum drop of nearly 30% within the month. During this period, addresses associated with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin executed 532 sell orders. According to Etherscan data, the last sell order was completed at 19:40 on February 26th, with the address cumulatively selling approximately 19,326 ETH.
Image source: Bitget Market Data
Three "transparencies": Announcement, purpose, and implementation disclosure
Vitalik's plan to change his funds was announced in advance. On January 30, Vitalik published a long article through his personal account X, announcing that he would withdraw 16,384 ETH (worth approximately $44 million at the time) from his personal wallet and gradually monetize it.
Image source: Vitalik's tweet
He explained that this move was his personal response to the Ethereum Foundation's (EF) "moderate austerity" phase. EF plans to reduce its annual spending from 15% of its treasury to 5% over five years, focusing more on core protocol development.
In his post, Vitalik detailed where the funds would go. The proceeds from the sale will be used to fund open-source projects and public goods, with a focus on privacy technologies (ZK proofs, fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), differential privacy), security hardware, verifiable computing, encrypted communication, native-first software, open-source operating systems, biotechnology/public health tools, and governance and coordination mechanisms. These areas are largely peripheral but crucial sectors after EF's austerity measures, and Vitalik emphasized that this was his personal decision to share the responsibility for EF's austerity.
Furthermore, the entire sale process was traceable through on-chain tools. Vitalik used a single address (0xfEB016D0D14AC0Fa6d69199608B0776d007203B2) and executed the sale in small batches via a single protocol (CoW Swap) to minimize market impact.
An "unexpected" event: the execution volume was slightly higher than anticipated.
Despite the high level of transparency, the execution results differed slightly from the initial forecast. The Vitalik address actually sold more than the previously announced 16,384 ETH, totaling approximately 19,326 ETH (about 2,942 ETH more than the initial forecast).
The sale began in the early morning of February 3rd, paused for about 10 days, and resumed on the 22nd, with the acceleration mainly occurring in the last two days. Specifically, approximately 4211.5 ETH were sold on February 5th, approximately 2283 on the 25th, and approximately 6297 on the 26th.
Data source: Etherscan & Bitget | Note: Data for the 26th is up to the moment of the last sell transaction.
Vitalik has not yet provided further details regarding whether the announced total is only a rough target or whether undisclosed changes occurred during implementation.
Vitalik once stated, "Since 2018, I have never sold ETH for personal wealth accumulation. All proceeds from sales have been used for donations, funding open-source projects, or charitable causes."
Image source: Vitalik Farcaster Text
Furthermore, compared to some projects that quietly unload their tokens, leading to subsequent collapses or crises of trust, Vitalik's "openly selling tokens" seems to be a healthier approach. This ETH sale plan, at least superficially, continues the path of public disclosure and non-personal profit-seeking.
Objectively speaking, however, the founder's accelerated selling during a rebound in the price of Ethereum, which was already experiencing a continuous decline, may negatively impact community and investor confidence. Market sentiment is already fragile, and Vitalik's actions could amplify FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Uncertainty), and even add to the overall bear market pressure, pushing ETH further down. In the short term, this could exacerbate the selling pressure from holders, affecting the Ethereum rebound trend and ecosystem stability.
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