The Ethereum price could be in for an unexpected price dump. An ETH whale has moved millions of dollars worth of ETH, and rumors are flying that Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin is behind the transfer.
According to reports citing Etherscan data, a total of $25.5 million in ETH has been moved across a trio of transactions: some 92,000 ETH, worth approximately $11.5 million, was directed from a single wallet to crypto exchange Kraken on Christmas day; Huobi was the recipient of an additional nearly 100,000 ETH; Binance received close to 26,000 ETH. The wallet in question was reportedly comprised of 300,000 ETH prior to the Kraken transaction, much of which was seemingly provided by Buterin, sparking concerns that an ETH dump could be in store.
Source: TwitterTwitter account ViewBase, which tracks tokens being dumped or accumulated, tweeted:
“The 92k ETH sent to Kraken today originated from a single whale, which in turn received most of its ETH from Vitalik Buterin. The whale is likely an ETH dev or VB himself.”
In response, the crypto community speculated that Buterin may be the likely owner of the ETH on the move. It wouldn’t be the first time. Cointelegraph points out that the Ethereum co-founder was behind the Ethereum Foundation’s decision to unload 70,000 ETH in late 2017/early 2018 when the price had reached its peak level of roughly $1,200, which netted them roughly $100 million.
The latest ETH whale activity comes on the heels of a much more sinister event, when nearly 800,000 ETH, worth more than $105 million, was transferred among wallets with ties to the PlusToken Ponzi scheme, which understandably made crypto investors nervous.
Ethereum and YouTube
Meanwhile, Ethereum has not gone unscathed from the YouTube crypto censorship that has awakened a sleeping giant on social media. As TrustedBrokerz previously reported, Google’s YouTube has been purging high-profile crypto-related accounts from its video platform, leaving the community scrambling to find a decentralized replacement. Including among the purge was an innocuous video of Buterin leading an Ethereum roadmap Q&A, a decision the blockchain pioneer described as “just….weird” before declaring that the crypto community is in need of “alternatives to YouTube.”
Source: TwitterButerin isn’t alone, as Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao issued a call to action to the crypto community in the wake of YouTube’s crypto purge, saying:
“It may be time the crypto community take a stab at its own blockchain-enabled censorship-resistent social media platform. Lots of challenges though, spam, scam, trolls, incentives, copyright, token economics, governance, stickiness, privacy… But it’s about time!”
Ethereum Hard Forks
Ethereum developers recently came under fire by the likes of coder Udi Wertheimer for a “disruptive hard fork” and botched Ice Age difficulty bomb implementations earlier this month. Ethereum’s next hard fork, dubbed Muir Glacier, is planned for Jan. 1, 2020. The upgrade, which will occur at block 9200000, involves a change to the timing of blockchain consensus. Node operators will have to upgrade their software to the new version. Users need not do anything unless otherwise advised by an exchange, web wallet service including Metamask, MyCrypto, or MyEtherWallet, or a hardware wallet such as Trezor or Ledger, or ShapeShift’s KeepKey.