Ethereum Foundation Sells 10,000 ETH To BitMine In $24M OTC Deal

Barely a month after its first transaction with BitMine, the Ethereum Foundation has announced another sale of significant amounts of Ether tokens to the digital asset treasury (DAT) company.

BitMine Picks Up Additional 10,000 ETH From Ethereum Foundation

In an April 24th post on the X platform, the Ethereum Foundation disclosed that it has “finalized the terms” of a 10,000 ETH sale, with BitMine as the counterparty in an over-the-counter (OTC) deal. This OTC transaction was reportedly completed at an average cost of $2,387 (equivalent to nearly $24 million in value).

This latest transaction comes a month and 10 days after the Ethereum Foundation sold 5,000 ETH (worth roughly $10.21 million at the time) to the Chairman Tom Lee-led digital asset treasury firm. Similar to the previous sale, proceeds from this transaction will fund the EF’s core operations & activities, including protocol R&D, ecosystem development, community grant funding, and more.

As disclosed in the last transaction, this sale is part of the ongoing treasury management activity and policy, within which the Ethereum Foundation disclosed that Ether will be sold to maintain its fiat-denominated assets from the Opex (operating expense) Buffer target. It is worth noting that these token sell-offs have not been well received by the crypto community, with many believing the foundation could earn income from staking rather than outright sales.

Interestingly, the Ethereum Foundation has also been staking a portion of its ETH holdings over the past few months, making this latest transaction all the more surprising. Earlier in the month, the EF closed in on its 70,000 ETH staking goal after sending 45,000 Ether tokens to the Beacon Deposit Contract.

However, the fact that the counterparty in this 10,000-ETH transaction is BitMine should bring some degree of calm to the crowd. With the largest Ethereum corporate holder always looking to expand its stockpile, the market can be relatively confident that the recently acquired tokens are unlikely to enter the open market.

The digital asset treasury firm revealed earlier in the week that it purchased 101,627 tokens between April 13 and April 19. The Tom Lee-chaired company now holds 4,976,485 ETH, about 4.12% of the cryptocurrency’s supply.

What’s interesting is that BitMine is believed to have a target of holding about 5% of the second-largest cryptocurrency’s total supply. With the target still a few percentage points away, the firm’s acquisition spree seems likely to not let up any time soon.

Ethereum Price At A Glance

As of this writing, the price of ETH is around $2,316, down 0.6% over the past 24 hours. According to CoinGecko data, the altcoin has declined by roughly 5% over the last 7 days.

The price of ETH on the daily timeframe | Source: ETHUSDT chart on TradingView

Featured image from iStock, chart from TradingView