Buterin deposits ETH worth $1m on Coinbase

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has transferred a large bag of Ether ($ETH) to the Coinbase exchange today.

As revealed by Ethereum blockchain-scanning website Etherscan, Buterin made a deposit of a total of 600 $ETH, which is around $1m worth of the cryptocurrency.

The move came in the background of the largest altcoin suffering a major drawdown in price. $ETH has been trading in the red for the past couple of days amidst the broader crypto market slide.

At the time of press, the native cryptocurrency of Ethereum was changing hands for $1,666, down by almost 10% weekly. Over the last seven days, traders also witnessed $1bn in liquidations in the cryptocurrency market. While $ETH was slightly recovering in price as of writing, it seemed to face resistance around the $1,700 level.

Buterin’s latest move came after he had repaid 250,000 $RAI on the lending platform Maker. $RAI is a non-pegged stablecoin backed by $ETH. Along with this, he also withdrew $1.6m worth of $ETH, according to on-chain tracker Lookonchain.

However, Buterin has not revealed his intentions behind the latest transfer of coins to Coinbase. Usually, investors move their crypto to exchanges when they are looking to sell. Since this move often attracts a transaction cost, it can be implied that there is an intent behind such a move.

However, the Ethereum creator also has a history of getting rid of massive amounts of tokens often gifted to his address by smaller projects. Back in March this year, Buterin was also seen moving 200 ETH to Kraken.

While the reason for the recent transaction remains unknown, the tokens could potentially be used for a specific purpose, like funding a fresh project or covering expenditures.

Back in June, Buterin was also observed transferring 400 $ETH to the Kraken exchange. The transaction happened quite swiftly, being processed and completed within 30 seconds. Buterin did this despite Kraken facing several legal challenges with the regulatory watchdog Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US.