Vitalik Buterin Selling ETH: 2026 Top Holders Revealed

Vitalik Buterin has sold about 17,196 ETH in 2026 (≈$34.96m), following a plan announced in late January to support Ethereum open-source development, privacy research, and broader ecosystem work. The sales were executed in smaller batches and included trades routed via CoW Protocol to limit direct market disruption while keeping activity visible on-chain. Despite the ETH outflows, the “top holder” question depends on the wallet category (contract vs institution vs exchange vs individual). The ETH2 Beacon Deposit Contract remains Ethereum’s largest visible holder, holding 62M+ ETH used for validator deposits, making it the biggest concentration of ETH in the system. Among exchanges, Coinbase (~4.2M ETH), Binance (~3.6M ETH), and Upbit (~1.7M ETH) rank highly as pooled custody wallets. Institutional exposure is also notable: BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust ETF holds around 3M+ ETH, and Grayscale is cited as a large holder. Bitmine is reported to have declared about 4.7M ETH total, with Arkham only verifying a smaller on-chain portion; the company’s stated goal is to accumulate 5% of Ethereum’s supply. For individual holders, Buterin still controls about 224,000 ETH, placing him among the largest publicly accessible wallets. Rain Lohmus holds slightly more (≈250,000 ETH) but is reported to have lost private keys. Layered ownership still dominates: Wrapped Ether holds 2.3M+ ETH, while Arbitrum and Base hold large ETH balances inside bridging infrastructure. The US government is also mentioned as holding 62k–63k ETH from seized funds. Key takeaway for traders: ETH selling by a founder is confirmed, but the market’s biggest “holder” is staking infrastructure, not any single person—so watch liquidity/exchange flows more than founder headlines.