Author: Sanqing, Foresight News

In February 2026, the crypto market continued to be sluggish, and Ethereum experienced a monthly decline for six consecutive months, with the largest decline in the month approaching 30%. During this period, addresses associated with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin performed 532 sell operations. According to Etherscan data, it completed its last selling operation at 19:40 on February 26, and its execution selling address sold a total of approximately 19,326 ETH.

Source: Bitget Quotes

Three "transparencies": notice, purpose and execution disclosure

Vitalik’s funding change plan has been announced in advance. On January 30, Vitalik published a long post through X’s personal account, announcing that he would withdraw 16,384 ETH (worth approximately US$44 million at the time) from his personal wallet and gradually liquidate it.

Image source: Vitalik tweet

He explained that this move was his personal response to the Ethereum Foundation (EF) entering the "moderate tightening" stage. EF plans to reduce annual expenses from 15% of treasury to 5% within 5 years, focusing more on core protocol development.

Vitalik also detailed where the funds went in the post. The funds obtained from this sale will be used to fund open source projects and public goods (Public Goods), focusing on privacy technologies (ZK proof, fully homomorphic encryption FHE, differential privacy), secure hardware, verifiable computing, encrypted communications, local-first software, open source operating systems, biotechnology/public health tools, and governance coordination mechanisms. Most of these areas are marginal but critical sectors after EF's tightening. Vitalik emphasized that this was his personal decision to share the responsibility for EF's tightening.

In addition, the entire sale process can be tracked through on-chain tools. Vitalik uses a single address (0xfEB016D0D14AC0Fa6d69199608B0776d007203B2) and executes in batches of small and medium amounts via a single protocol (CoW Swap) to minimize market impact.

An "accident": the execution volume is slightly higher than the forecast

Despite the high degree of transparency, the execution results were slightly different from the initial preview. The actual sales volume of the Vitalik address has exceeded the previously announced 16,384 ETH, with a total of approximately 19,326 ETH sold (exceeding approximately 2942 ETH).

The sale started in the early morning of February 3, and after a pause of about 10 days, the sale started again on the 22nd, and the acceleration mainly occurred in the past two days. Among them, approximately 4,211.5 ETH were sold on February 5, approximately 2,283 ETH were sold on the 25th, and approximately 6,297 ETH were sold on the 26th.

Data source: Etherscan & Bitget | Note: The data on the 26th is as of the last selling operation

Vitalik has not yet made further explanation as to whether the total amount of the preview is only a rough target, or there are undisclosed changes in the implementation process.

Vitalik once said: "Since 2018, I have never sold ETH for personal wealth accumulation. All sales proceeds have been basically used for donations, funding open source projects or charity."

Photo source: Text by Vitalik Farcaster

Compared with the fact that some project parties quietly shipped goods, resulting in subsequent collapse or crisis of trust, Vitalik's "selling coins openly" does seem to be healthier. This ETH sale plan, at least on the surface, continues the path of public, non-personal profit.

But objectively speaking, the founder accelerated the selling of coins at the rebound node when the currency price continued to fall, which may have a certain impact on the confidence of the community and investors. Market sentiment is already fragile, and Vitalik's actions may amplify FUD, and even add to the overall bear market pressure, pushing ETH further downward. In the short term, this may intensify the selling of currency holders and affect the rebound trend and ecological stability of Ethereum.