Vitalik Buterin wrapped up a series of Ethereum (ETH) sales in the past few days. After consolidating the funds into USDC, one of the known addresses made a deposit to Aave.
Vitalik Buterin is now a supporter of Aave (AAVE), putting USDC into the lending protocol. Buterin, known for long-term holding, is also using his Ethereum (ETH) to signal support for the ecosystem.
After a series of sales, Buterin ended up liquidating 950 ETH over the past couple of weeks. The transactions were routed through Cow Protocol and other decentralized platforms. Some of the proceeds of $2.27M in USDC were then transferred to Aave. The sales happened from an intermediary address, which was related to one of the main wallets belonging to Buterin.
The funds were sent to the Aave USDC V3 vaults, which now hold more than $302.5M. Additionally, the wallet deposited 2,851 ETH into Aave, further adding to the protocol’s recently growing liquidity. The recent inflows also extend the trend of smart money withdrawing AAVE from exchanges or using the protocol for passive income, instead of riskier DeFi hubs.
Buterin has not endorsed any DeFi projects, and has in fact spoken against yield-based hubs. He has talked more favorably about simpler use cases like DEX trading, stablecoins and synthetic assets.
Aave already holds $445.7M in staked tokens, in addition to hosting $11.13B in loans and collaterals. The project is getting additional interest with expectations of seeing V4 soon, with targeted liquidity and additional liquidation safeguards. V4 may not be an immediate development, as it is still at the temperature check phase, but is still seen as possible in the coming months.
Vitalik Buterin breaks his no-selling streak
Just before the recent outflows from Buterin’s wallets, he tweeted about his long streak of holding ETH. In the past, Buterin has mostly sold airdropped tokens and other known or accidental token allocations. While he has not engaged with any official policy of holding, Buterin is also seen as an indicator of bullishness for ETH.
I haven’t sold and kept the proceeds since 2018. All sales have been to support various projects that I think are valuable, either within the ethereum ecosystem or broader charity (eg. biomedical R&D)
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) August 31, 2024
The latest sales through CoW Swap were actually a predetermined order set up on August 29, Buterin claimed. The sale was in support of a project in bio-defense, going through automated CoW Swap transactions. Buterin explained the series of sales were a form of TWAP orders, spreading the liquidation across a longer time period to avoid depressing the asset price.
The last time Buterin tweeted about bio-defense was in support of a group of long covid researchers.
The latest selling happened at an average price of $2,396 per ETH, with selling in the form of WETH. Previously, Buterin has sold more than $336M worth of ETH during the 2021 cycle top, where ETH traded above $4,800.
The Ethereum Foundation also added to the selling pressure, achieving some of the sales near local market peaks. The selling added to market pressures on ETH, which sank to a lower baseline, trading at $2,359.05.
Despite the selling, the latest actions of Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation still show confidence in the ecosystem and its DeFi hubs.
Recently, Buterin warned that ecosystem endorsements will be given only to L2s that are decentralized enough.
Aave continues to expand the GHO supply
Aave is on track to expand the supply of its native token, GHO. In the past couple of days, GHO added another 2M tokens to its total supply. GHO now has a market cap above $137B, awaiting a rise to $175B where Aave will begin buybacks.
The renewed interest in Aave pushed the native AAVE token up from the top 100 into the top 40 assets by market capitalization. AAVE rallied above $150 to reach a one-year peak after trading sideways for years during the bear market.
Before Vitalik Buterin’s deposit, Aave also attracted interest from Sky, formerly Maker. The protocol may soon start hosting USDS in its vaults as both a collateral and loan asset. Before the rebranding, the Ethereum Foundation also sold ETH and converted it to DAI, soon to be rebranded to USDS. The links to Aave are adding to the hype about the protocol, solidifying its position as the top lending hub during the current market cycle.
Cryptopolitan reporting by Hristina Vasileva
