[Vitalik Buterin gets slammed by Bitcoin Maxi, but Erik Voorhees comes to the rescue]
Andrew Howard, chief commercial officer of Jan3, criticized Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin for selling off nearly $100 million in ether six years ago when the price reached an all-time high.
Several prominent figures in the Bitcoin community, including Erik Voorhees, defended Buterin.
Andrew Howard mentioned in the post that Vitalik Buterin publicly admitted to selling 70,000 Ethereum coins in 2018, when the price of Ethereum reached an all-time high of $1,119.
At this price, Buterin sold a whopping $95,550,000 worth of ether. Howard pointed out that Buterin sold these ether coins to the holders, and compared Buterin with the mysterious Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto, saying that "Satoshi Nakamoto has not sold a single Bitcoin yet."
Erik Voorhees, a Bitcoin maximalist and CEO of the ShapShift crypto exchange, defended Buterin, reminding Howard that Buterin created $400 billion in value with an investment of $18 million, and now "the maximalists feel guilty about his 0.025% profit." dissatisfied."
In the comment area, the encryption community started a heated discussion. Many have called Ethereum centralized, accused Buterin of unilaterally controlling the total amount of Ethereum, and called Ethereum an unregistered security.
However, one X user questioned whether Satoshi Nakamoto actually kept all the Bitcoins unsold and did not profit from them.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved a spot Ethereum exchange-traded fund (ETF) application submitted at the beginning of the year.
Wall Street firms that have filed for an Ethereum ETF include BlackRock, VanEck, Grayscale and Ark Invest. The companies received approval for a spot Bitcoin ETF in mid-January and subsequently applied to launch similar products based on Ethereum.
The decision was unexpected, as many experts did not expect the SEC to approve the products so quickly. However, ahead of the announcement, several funds updated their applications to remove ether staking, as Coinbase and Kraken were recently sued by the SEC for launching crypto staking services.
