Joe Lubin

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As Vitalik Buterin’s holdings represented a large portion of the circulating supply for some of the tokens, the sales resulted in huge price drops.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has gone on a shitcoin selling spree, exchanging nearly $700,000 worth of tokens previously airdropped to him for Ether (ETH).

According to Etherscan, a wallet belonging to Buterin on March 7 offloaded 500 trillion SHIKOKU (SHIK) for 380.3 ETH ($595,448), nearly 10 billion Cult DAO (CULT) for 58.1 ETH ($91,021), and 50 billion Mops (MOPS) for 1.25 ETH ($1,950).

*A screenshot of token transactions from Vitalik’s wallet. Source: Etherscan*

Due to the low liquidity of the tokens the sales had a huge effect on their prices. The largest price drop from the tokens was SHIK, which recorded an 86% drop following Buterin’s sale according to CoinMarketCap data.

#PeckShieldAlert $SHIK (SHIKOKU) has dropped -95.8%
Vitalik Buterin-labeled address has dumped ~5T $SHIK, and gained ~164 $ETH (~260k) and transferred 214 $ETH ($337k) to EthDevhttps://t.co/Uw6TA1RDKP pic.twitter.com/FuIbgGgrdA
— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) March 7, 2023

The total circulating supply of SHIK is 1 quadrillion, with the 500 trillion previously held by Buterin representing 50% of the current supply.

In May 2021 the Ethereum co-founder initiated a similar offload selling tokens such as Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Dogelon Mars (ELON) that resulted in price drops of 40% and 90% respectively.

While some within the cryptocurrency community shared their frustration at Buterin’s decision to sell considering the outsized effect it had on the tokens, others suggested it was motivated by the tax implications of receiving airdrops, which are subject to income tax in most countries.

Seems like a strange move, he is more than aware this would tank prices and drain liquidity. My one assumption is that his accountant warned him these tokens would count as income on his tax sheet. Selling to cover the expense
— SecureZero  (@securezero) March 7, 2023

Buterin confirmed he owned the wallet in a 2018 tweet after he was accused of hoarding 75% of the supply of Ether with fellow Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin during the token's pre-mining sale.

Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin says no chance ETH is classed as security

February 10, 2023 Coin Telegraph

CFTC

The ConsenSys founder and Ethereum co-founder said it’s as unlikely as ride-sharing service Uber becoming illegal.

Ethereum co-founder and crypto entrepreneur Joseph Lubin is confident that Ether (ETH) won’t be classified as a security in the United States.

Cointelegraph spoke with Lubin, Ethereum co-founder and founder of blockchain tech firm ConsenSys, in Tel Aviv at the Web3 event, Building Blocks 23.

Asked if ETH could be classed as a security in the U.S. after Ethereum’s transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus model, Lubin said:

“I think it's as likely, and would have the same impact, as if Uber was made illegal.”

“There would be a tremendous outcry from not just the crypto community but different politicians and certain regulators,” he added.

In September, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler suggested that the blockchain’s transition to PoS might have brought ETH under the regulators’ beat.

Gensler believed staking coins gave “the investing public” anticipation of “profits based on the efforts of others.”

Lubin said he was privy to discussions with the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission “for many years.”

*Joseph Lubin speaking with Cointelegraph at Building Blocks 23 in Tel Aviv, Israel in February.*

He said around five years ago the regulators were “just trying to wrap their heads around what tokens were.”

“They thought back then that everything was a security. We — I think — helped them significantly understand lots of tokens are not securities, and then they went away and Gary and team now think almost everything's a security.”

Lubin, however, believes that ETH continues to be “sufficiently decentralized” and pointed to its “many use cases that don’t implicate it as a security.”

“There is no centralized set of promoters or builders that is specifically trying to raise the value of Ether and enrich investors,” he added.

“There's a court system in the United States of America that I think would be supportive of arguments that would be made that it is not.”

Lubin said that regulators appear to be more focused on another aspect of Ethereum at the moment, noting that people he knows close to the action in Washington D.C. say “most of the focus is on stablecoins right now.”

“Everybody's talking about it, freaking out. Calling for things to be done.”

In a Feb. 9 Twitter thread, Coinbase founder and CEO Brian Armstrong responded to “rumors” that the SEC was thinking to ban retail consumers from staking crypto.

“Staking is not a security,” he said, adding it would be a “terrible path for the U.S.” if a staking ban was passed noting it was “a really important innovation in crypto.”

“Hopefully we can work together to publish clear rules for the industry, and come up with sensible solutions that protect consumers while preserving innovation,” Armstrong said.

ConsenSys founder ‘bullish’ on Ethereum following crypto winter performance

February 8, 2023 Coin Telegraph

co-founder

Ethereum co-founder and ConsenSys founder Joe Lubin says ETH’s relatively stable value through crypto winter is reason to be bullish about Ethereum’s future.

With Ethereum showing resilience through the latest cryptocurrency winter, ConsenSys founder Joe Lubin says he’s ‘bullish’ over Ether's (ETH) relative stability through compounding macro events.

Cointelegraph Magazine editor Andrew Fenton spoke to Lubin at the Web3 event Building Blocks 23 in Tel Aviv, Israel, for an all-encompassing interview around the current state and future of the Ethereum ecosystem landscape.

The co-founder of the preeminent smart contract blockchain protocol touched on a number of subjects, including ETH’s market performance over the past year. A myriad of macro events, including the collapse of algorithmic stablecoin Terra/LUNA and the demise of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, played their role in what Lubin described as a blow off top for the ecosystem:

“We do this thing as you know, where we get irrationally exuberant, and then there's a blow off top, higher highs, lower lows.”

Lubin likened the past 12 months to the early 2000s, where the dot-com boom and bust saw 'crazy ideas' explored driven by 'exuberance' for geopolitical, economic and ecosystem reasons. He believes the same type of exuberance may not drive investors in the crypto space in the near future but sees potential for more great projects and 'tremendous innovation':

“I think we're in a phase where we have built enough enabling infrastructure. We built scalability, usability, and now we can build more useful use cases.”

Despite a tough year for the cryptocurrency markets, Lubin takes positives out of the resilience of the Ethereum ecosystem and the value being realized by ‘high profile companies’ exploring what can be built within nonfungible token (NFT) space in particular.

The ConsenSys founder added that ETH’s ability to hold its value around $1200 for an extended period while certain ‘CeFi’ players imploded was reason to be positive for the future of the ecosystem:

“It feels like there just weren't people who would sell the token at lower prices. And that's a good thing. I'm bullish from here.”

The Ethereum Merge also played an important role in the market value of ETH in recent months. Part of Ethereum’s move to proof-of-stake consensus was the introduction of its fee-burning mechanism, which saw Ethereum become deflationary for the first time in November 2022.

Lubin also touched on this subject, highlighting his belief that making ether deflationary was important to ensure the underlying asset increases in value over time:

“There's money that you spend to buy a coffee. There's money that you invest. There's money you can lend and borrow. You want sort of your high economic bandwidth money, like ether, to be very fresh and to appreciate in value.”

The Ethereum co-founder also said he was confident that the Ethereum ecosystem would not see any further changes in its monetary supply and that a continual contraction of the monetary base was likely to continue.

“I think a slow contraction is reasonable, or at least if you smooth that we'll certainly have ether locked in the protocol and we'll have ether locked in other kinds of DAO voting systems, DeFi, etcetera. I do think that's valuable for the ecosystem.”

Ethereum is now gearing up for the upcoming Shanghai hard fork, of which an important feature will be the enabling of staked ETH in the Beacon Chain and rewards to be withdrawn by users. Ethereum foundation developers have been aiming for March 2023 as a tentative deploy date.

Ethereum is becoming ultrasound money, ConsenSys founder says

August 5, 2021 Coin Telegraph

bitcoin maximalist

“With $13 billion worth of Ether locked up in Ethereum 2.0 and $70 billion locked up in decentralized finance, we have enormous demand for the Ether token,” said ConsenSys founder Joe Lubin.

ConsenSys founder and Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Joseph Lubin has implied that Ethereum is transitioning to “ultrasound money” status ahead of the London hard fork slated to activate around 12:30 pm UTC Aug. 5.

During an interview with Bloomberg TV, Lubin was questioned on the imminent EIP-1559 upgrade, which will see Ethereum transition away from a bidding-based fee market to a fixed price and burn mechanism.

Lubin stated that the London hard fork is part of a broader global movement in which the first step is the “democratization of the Earth,” and the second step is the democratization of the decentralized finance (DeFi) system and the introduction of ultrasound money:

“The second step that's in full play right now is the democratization of the global decentralized finance system. And this step is the introduction of something that people are calling ultrasound money.”

The term ultrasound money has been a long-running meme held in Ethereum based communities that mocks Bitcoiners who describe BTC as “sound money” due to its capped supply of 21 million.

The meme refers to the EIP-1559 proposal’s burn mechanism that could result in Ethereum’s supply becoming deflationary after more Ether is destroyed than created. Each transaction will burn a base fee, resulting in a decreasing supply of the asset from now on. Some believe that it will give ETH a stronger value proposition than Bitcoin (BTC) as “ultrasound money.

“So we're a fixed amount of gold on the planet. And the fixed supply of Bitcoin represents sound money to certain people. With $13 billion worth of Ether locked up in Ethereum 2.0 and $70 billion locked up in decentralized finance, we have enormous demand for the Ether token,” Lubin said.

“And now we're burning the Ether token with the introduction of the London hard fork,” he added.

ETH seems unlikely to become deflationary soon after the London hard fork, and the upgrade doesn’t ensure this by default. Twitter user “korpi” highlighted on Aug. 2 that this “doesn't mean that ETH immediately becomes a deflationary asset. For that to happen, ETH burned must be higher than ETH issued in block rewards.” This is more likely after the move to proof-of-stake.

Bitcoin maxi Peter McCormack appeared unhappy with Lubin’s interview and discussions of ultrasound money, noting on Twitter that:

“Ultra-sound money is a disingenuous use of language. It implies that Ethereum is better money than Bitcoin. While directionally centralizing and operating with a flexible monetary policy.”

User “bobMull12314085” found the funny side however, stating that “you maxi’s are so sensitive.”

The Bitcoin community has gotten so pathetic that they actively beg regulators to classify ETH as a security. This has been going on for years.

Some examples of many just from today… pic.twitter.com/9I2k96bLma
— eric.eth (@econoar) August 5, 2021

The London hard fork is a major milestone in the journey to Ethereum 2.0, which will change the network's consensus algorithm from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake or PoS.

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