Andrew Howard, CBO of the company Jan3 headed by Samson Mow, has sent criticism against Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin for dumping almost $100 million worth of ETH into the market six years ago, when the price of ETH hit an all-time high. .
Andrew Howard, CBO of the company Jan3 headed by Samson Mow, has sent criticism against Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin for dumping almost $100 million worth of ETH into the market six years ago, when the price of ETH hit an all-time high. .
Several Bitcoiners, including prominent community figure Erik Voorhees, have taken on Howard to defend Buterin.
Howard hits Buterin, Erik Voorhees defends Buterin
In his tweet, Andrew Howard recalled that Vitalik Buterin had admitted to publicly selling 70,000 ETH in 2018, when the second largest cryptocurrency reached an all-time high price of $1,119.
At that price, the amount of ETH sold by Buterin amounted to a whopping $95,550,000. Howard noted that Buterin “threw it to ETH holders.” He compared Buterin to the mysterious creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, stating that “Satoshi has yet to sell a single Bitcoin. Ever.”
Bitcoin maximalist and CEO of crypto exchange ShapShift has stepped in to defend Vitalik Buterin. The Bitcoin entrepreneur reminded Howard that Buterin had created $400 billion in value with an $18 million investment, and now “he’s very angry because he made a 0.025% profit” on it.
Crypto community engages in heated debate
In the comments thread, the crypto community started a heated discussion about Howard’s tweet. Many called Ethereum centralized, accusing Buterin of single-handedly having control over the total supply of ETH and calling Ethereum an unregistered security.
However, one X user assumed that it is unknown if Satoshi Nakamoto actually kept all of his Bitcoin unsold and made no profit from it.
Yuri MolchanEthereum ETFs get green light from SEC
Earlier this week, the US Securities and Exchange Commission issued approval for Ethereum spot exchange-traded funds in several filings filed earlier in the year.
Among the Wall Street firms that have filed for Ethereum ETFs are BlackRock, VanEck, Grayscale, and Ark Invest. Generally, the same companies that gained approval for spot Bitcoin ETFs in mid-January have applied to launch similar products based on the second-largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum.
This decision was unexpected, as many experts did not believe that the SEC would take so little time to approve these products. However, prior to the announcement, several funds updated their filings deleting their stake in ETH, as the SEC recently sued Coinbase and Kraken for launching cryptocurrency staking services.
