Wallet linked to the Ethereum Foundation moves $3M in ETH to Bitstamp

Lookonchain identified a substantial transfer of 1,250 $ETH worth $3.03M from a wallet suspected to be linked to the Ethereum Foundation to the Bitstamp exchange. According to Etherscan.io, the wallet moved ~3,420 $ETH (~8.93M at the time) in six transactions to address: 0x547b1f01…27B1d40D5 on August 18th.

The on-chain data confirmed that the wallet had transferred $ETH worth over $11M in 2024 after acquiring 772 $ETH (~$700K at the time) through Poliniex between Nov. 15, 2017, and Jan. 30, 2028. The other most significant activity noted from the wallet was on Sep. 26, 2017, when 2,000 $ETH worth well over half a million dollars was deposited to Polkadot.

Large deposit to Bitstamp sparks speculation

On-chain tracker Lookonchain revealed that a wallet connected to the Ethereum Foundation moved over $3M worth of $ETH to the Bitstamp exchange. Data from Etherscan.io confirmed that the wallet had only transferred 4,670 $ETH in 2024 after being dormant for over 6 years. 

In response to Lookonchain’s exposé on X, one commenter was fascinated by the Ethereum Foundation’s wallet history, especially considering the huge appreciation from $51.2K to $124.5 million. Yet another one believed that selling this much $ETH affected the price and made $ETH bearish. 

The wallet received 51,251 $ETH on Nov. 17th, 2015, and made a trial transfer of 1 $ETH to a wallet with the address 0xfaE03453…52Cd1AF7E. This was followed by a 14,000 $ETH transfer to the same account in seven transactions of 2,000 $ETH between November 18, 2015, and February 11, 2016. Nearly five months later, another 1ETH trial transaction was made to the same address, followed by a 1,000 $ETH transfer. 

The wallet was idle again for another four months before resuming activity with a series of four ‘ReplaySafeSplit’ smart contract transfers of 10 $ETH, 2,000 $ETH, 25K $ETH, and 30.24K $ETH between Nov.10, 2016, and Nov. 24, 2016. Approximately a week later, the wallet was active again, acquiring over 10.7K $ETH in 13 transactions through Poloniex between Dec. 3, 2016, and Aug. 28, 2017. 

The wallet still held a balance of 11K $ETH valued at over $26.7 million as of Oct. 8, 2024.

Lookonchain reveals more activity from another Ethereum Foundation wallet

The on-chain tracker revealed that the Ethereum Foundation deposited 35,000 $ETH (~$94.07M) into Kraken on Aug. 23. According to Lookonchain’s data, the Foundation’s wallet had little activity in the last 153 days with several small donations from Sheptika Inu (SHEP) and Egonauta (EGON) and only four transfers of 1,000 $ETH each. 

The first two 1,000 $ETH transactions directed the tokens to two different addresses, while the last two 1,000 $ETH transactions sent the tokens to the same address.

The wallet held 271,274 $ETH valued at $655.6M (at $2,416.82 per $ETH) as of the time of writing. 

Bitstamp’s $ETH chart showed that Ethereum had dropped 2.74% to $2,440.9 in the past 24 hours. Coingecko’s data revealed that $ETH’s circulating supply was 120.4 million tokens with a 24-hour trading volume of $14.76 billion (-1.6%). The market cap and FDV were both at $292.1 billion. The data also showed that Ethereum underperformed (-3.3%) the global crypto market, which surged by 1.9% in the past week.