On Monday, a wallet owned by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin (vitalik.eth) transferred about $1 million (600 ETH) to Coinbase, initially reported by crypto-cybersecurity group PeckShieldAlert.
Buterin also refunds RAI tokens
Buterin, according to Etherscan and blockchain data analytics firm Lookonchain, revealed that Buterin also happened to redeem 251,000 Rai Reflex Index (RAI) tokens on Maker and withdraw about $1.6 million (1,000 ETH) just hours before moving the ETH to Coinbase.
RAI is an Ethereum-backed stablecoin launched in 2021 from then-blockchain startup Reflexer Labs, which is not pegged to any fiat currency. Monetary policy is managed through an on-chain, autonomous controller that ensures that the digital asset maintains its own price stability without being pegged to the US dollar.
However, Buterin’s Ethereum wallet still has about $6.5 million, according to Etherscan.
While there seem to be a number of theories as to why Buterin made this transfer, one of the theories that really stands out is Coinbase’s new layer-2 blockchain, Base, which launched earlier this month and is built on top of the Ethereum blockchain.
That said, it’s hard not to look at that and wonder what this means for Ether as investors are also paying more attention to Bitcoin and Ordinals.
Over the weekend, a number of major cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, remained vulnerable. According to TradingView and CoinTelegraph Markets Pro, BTC suffered an 11 percent loss. This comes after last week’s significant drop by BTC from $29,000 to $25,500. It currently sits at around $26,000 as of writing.
However, ETH, which fell 10% over the past seven days, appeared to be rising slightly over the past 24 hours, trading at $1,700 as of writing.
Hopefully, with the days to come, we’ll know more behind Buterin’s decision to transfer that kind of ETH volume to Base.