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- Ethereum founder moves $158M ETH to Kraken as $2K breaks
- Massive ETH transfer from founder wallet surfaces during market price weakness
- Traders monitor founder wallets as Ethereum falls below critical $2,000 level
Ethereum slipped below the widely watched $2,000 price level as a large transfer linked to an early founder wallet appeared across blockchain tracking platforms, drawing attention from traders who closely monitor major on-chain movements during periods of heightened market volatility.
According to Onchain Lens data, Ethereum co-founder Jeffrey Wilcke sent 79,859 ETH to the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange in the last 24 hours, and the transaction had a rough value of about $158.31 million when the funds entered the trading platform. Therefore, in a few blockchain monitoring dashboards utilised by traders and analysts, the transaction emerged, as the wallet movements of founders frequently receive immediate coverage due to the large allocations held by the early Ethereum donors.
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In the meantime, Ethereum was still trading lower on major cryptocurrency exchanges, and the product recently traded below the $2,000 psychological level that most traders pay attention to when the market is in chaos. In addition, the massive deposits to centralised exchanges typically become visible nearly immediately, as blockchain history is publicly accessible, enabling analysts to track wallet activity across various trading platforms in real time.
Moreover, the Ethereum wallet addresses created in the early years are still widely recognised in blockchain analytics tools, so large transactions conducted by these wallets often attract the attention of market analysts studying liquidity trends.
Founder Wallet Transfer Appears Across Blockchain Tracking Platforms
The blockchain monitoring systems enable market participants to realise substantial transfers shortly after they occur. Consequently, the movements of founder wallets are circulated rapidly across the analytics dashboards deployed across the cryptocurrency industry.
In addition, traders frequently monitor transactions related to the initial contributors of the network, as large amounts of ETH are still stored in these wallets, even though it was distributed to them during the network’s development. Past blockchain records also indicate that founder wallets have made similar transfers in previous market cycles, especially when digital asset markets are experiencing increased volatility or liquidity changes.
Wilcke’s Wallet Balance Declines After Kraken Deposit
The blockchain ledger indicates that the amount readily accessible in the wallet that Wilcke was known to have decreased sharply after the most recent transaction was recorded on the Kraken exchange, and the corresponding address where it is being tracked still contains about 16,037 ETH after the transfer.
The remaining holdings are currently worth about $31.66 million on the market, whereas the wallet once held an immensely larger balance in the early years of Ethereum development. In 2019, Wilcke left direct Ethereum development and later switched to building his own gaming company, abandoning active work on protocol development.
Nevertheless, blockchain records indicate that Wilcke has made large ETH payments to Kraken on multiple occasions over the last five market cycles, and his wallet transfers have cumulatively exceeded $500 million over several years. This was one of the transactions made in May last year, when Wilcke sold 105,736 ETH to Kraken, and it was estimated to be worth about $262 million at the time the funds were sent to the exchange.
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