Author: Claude, Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Introduction: The Ethereum Foundation completed the OTC sale of 10,000 ETH at an average price of $2,387 on April 24, with a total amount of approximately $23.87 million, the buyer being BitMine, under Tom Lee. This is the EF's third large-scale coin sale operation this year, but the buyer is hoarding ETH at a rate of tens of thousands per week, aiming at 5% of the circulating supply. The timing of the coin sale in the same week as the Kelp vulnerability triggering the largest rescue operation in DeFi history has again attracted criticism from the community.

The Ethereum Foundation shows no signs of stopping its coin selling pace.

On April 24, the foundation announced on the X platform that it completed an OTC transaction of 10,000 ETH at an average price of $2,387, totaling approximately $23.87 million. The counterparty was BitMine Immersion Technologies (NYSE: BMNR), and the on-chain transaction was initiated from the foundation’s Safe multi-signature address (0x9fC3dc011b461664c835F2527fffb1169b3C213e). According to the foundation's statement, the proceeds will be used for protocol development, ecosystem building, and community funding.

The context of this transaction is quite delicate: in the same week, the DeFi industry was fully engaged in responding to the $292 million vulnerability crisis of Kelp DAO, with Aave and over ten other protocols launching the "DeFi United" rescue fund to raise 100,000 ETH. The foundation's choice to sell coins instead of participating in the rescue during this period has triggered another round of community dissatisfaction.

The third large-scale coin sale in 2026, a single scale sets a new high for the year

This is not an isolated event. Looking back since 2026, the foundation has completed at least three large-scale ETH liquidation operations:

On March 14, the foundation sold 5,000 ETH to BitMine via OTC at an average price of about $2,043, totaling approximately $10.21 million. On April 8, the foundation converted 5,000 ETH into about 11.1 million DAI stablecoins using CoWSwap's TWAP feature (Time Weighted Average Price, which splits large orders into multiple smaller transactions to reduce market impact), when the ETH price was around $2,220. The OTC transaction of 10,000 ETH on April 24 is the largest single-scale operation of the year.

The three transactions sold a total of 20,000 ETH, with a total value of approximately $45.18 million.

Looking further back, according to Spot On Chain data, the foundation sold approximately 4,466 ETH throughout 2024, totaling $12.61 million, with an average price of $2,823, divided into 32 transactions. Among them, 15 transactions occurred near the price peaks of ETH, leading the community to jokingly refer to the foundation as the "master of selling at peaks."

The change in 2026 is: the scale of sales has significantly increased, jumping from retail-style sales of 100 coins each in 2024 to institutional-level sales of 5,000 to 10,000 coins per transaction. This is consistent with the treasury management policy released by the foundation in June 2025. This policy stipulates that annual operational expenditures should be 15% of the total treasury value while maintaining a fiat operation buffer of 2.5 years. When the fiat reserve falls below the buffer target, ETH sales are automatically triggered.

Buyer BitMine: Holding nearly 5 million ETH, targeting 5% of circulation

The existence of the counterparty BitMine adds a layer of significance to this sale.

BitMine is chaired by Tom Lee, the founder of Fundstrat, and launched the ETH treasury strategy through a $250 million private placement in June 2025. As of April 24, BitMine held approximately 4.97 million ETH, accounting for 4.12% of the total circulating ETH, with total assets of about $12.9 billion, making it the largest ETH corporate treasury in the world, second only to Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) in BTC holdings.

BitMine's buying pace is extremely aggressive. According to CoinDesk, in just the third week of April, BitMine purchased 101,627 ETH (approximately $230 million), marking the largest single-week purchase since 2026. The company's goal is to hold 5% of the ETH circulating supply (about 6 million coins), with the current completion rate at approximately 81%. About 3.33 million ETH have already been staked, generating an annualized staking income of about $221 million.

Tom Lee insisted on increasing his holdings even when ETH dropped below $2,000 in February, with BitMine facing a floating loss of about $8 billion, publicly stating that ETH was in the "last stage of a mini crypto winter." On April 13, he referred to ETH as a "wartime store of value asset."

In other words, the 10,000 ETH from the foundation did not flow into the open market but went directly into the hands of an institution that clearly stated its intention to hold long-term and is currently buying at a rate far exceeding the foundation's selling speed. From the perspective of supply structure, the actual market impact of this OTC transaction is close to zero.

Why still selling after staking 70,000 ETH?

On February 24 of this year, the foundation announced the initiation of a staking plan for 70,000 ETH, which was basically completed by April 3, with a total staking volume of about 69,500 ETH, valued at approximately $14.3 million at the time. Based on annualized staking yields of 2.7% to 3.8%, this could generate an annual income of about $3.9 million to $5.4 million.

The community once interpreted this as "the foundation no longer needs to sell coins." Discussions emerged on Reddit saying "the foundation has stopped selling coins." However, the subsequent OTC trades in March and the conversion on April 8 quickly shattered this illusion.

The arithmetic is simple: the foundation's grant expenditure in the first quarter of 2025 was $32.6 million, equivalent to about 14,700 ETH. The annual staking income of $3.9 million to $5.4 million can only cover about one-third of the quarterly grant expenditures. The $11.1 million conversion on April 8 also only accounted for 33% of a single quarter's grants. Staking and DeFi lending improved treasury flexibility, but were far from sufficient to replace direct coin sales.

Behind the name "master of selling at peaks": The historical correlation between EF's coin sales and ETH prices

The relationship between the foundation's coin sales and ETH prices remains a long-standing discussion topic in the crypto community.

According to a research report released by CoinGecko in March this year, the agency analyzed all on-chain transfers of more than 100 ETH by the foundation from October 2017 to January 2025. The conclusion was that the 30-day rolling correlation mainly ranged between -0.3 and 0.5, indicating weak to moderate correlation. The short-term (3-day) correlation fluctuated greatly, from -0.999 to +0.999, reflecting market sentiment more than the actual impact of the foundation's selling behavior itself.

However, several specific cases have left a deep impression on the community. After the concentrated sale by the foundation in December 2017, ETH corrected nearly 40% from a peak of $850 to $520. In May 2023, the foundation transferred 15,000 ETH to the Kraken exchange, after which the ETH price fell by approximately 6%. In the 32 transactions of 2024, on-chain analyst Spot On Chain noted that 15 of them occurred near price peaks.

As of the time of writing, ETH is priced at approximately $2,328, down about 52% from the all-time high of $4,897 set in August 2025, consolidating below the critical resistance level of $2,500.