Just noticed something interesting - Vitalik's been steadily offloading ETH earlier this year, around 17,000 tokens worth roughly $43 million at the time. He had earmarked these for privacy and security projects back in January, and the sales have been happening through CoW Protocol in small trades rather than big dumps. Smart way to avoid slippage, but it's been a slow bleed throughout the month.

The timing was rough though. When he was selling, ETH was getting hammered - dropped like 37% over that period and hit around $1,900. Now it's recovered to $2.32K, so at least the worst of it seems behind us. But at the time, his sales were adding pressure to an already struggling narrative. The staking yields had also compressed to like 2.8%, which made holding even less attractive.

What's wild is how much pain this caused for the big corporate ETH holders. Some of them are sitting on massive unrealized losses after holding through that 60% drop over six months. Vitalik's move was supposed to be gradual over several years for the Ethereum Foundation's initiatives, but the market timing made it look worse than it probably was. Anyway, good to see ETH bouncing back now.