Jeffrey Wilcke (pictured right), an ethereum developer and one of the founding team, has sent 92,000 eth ($11.5 million) to Kraken on Christmas day.

Our blockchain analysis begins with an account that moved 408,000 eth in January 2016, the 0x600 address.

This account was funded by the Ethereum Foundation dev wallet. Presumably the funding was part of the initial distribution that the founding team got at the inception of ethereum.

Jeffrey Wilcke’s ethereum address, Dec 2019

That 408,000 eth was moved to the above address back in 2016, an address that shows continuous, but gradual, selling or movement of funds until this Christmas it sees a sharp drop in funds.

It still has 218,000 eth ($27 million), but ◊90,000 of it was moved first to what looks like an intermediary address, and then was sent to Kraken in full.

Jeff Wilcke sells 90,000 eth, Dec 2019

We know this is Wilcke’s address, as much as anything can be known, because the originating one, the 0x600, interacted with the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) two years ago.

Thankfully etherscan shows us what that interaction was, and it was this 0x600 address registering the name of Jeff Wilcke.

Jeff Wilcke, ENS, Dec 2019

Based on these facts there is little doubt this ◊92,000 belongs to Wilcke, with his Christmas presumably very expensive as he looks now to a millionaire new year.

His github appears to show no activity since March of this year. After making millions, he appears to have left, with his Twitter suggesting he is working on some sort of game.

Describing the early history of ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, another ethereum co-founder, says:

“Jeffrey Wilcke, lead developer of the Go client (back then called ‘ethereal’) also reached out and started coding around [December 2013], though his contributions were much more on the side of client development rather than protocol research.”

A number of the other early ethereum devs have also left, with the initial distribution being 11 million eth to the co-founding team.

Buterin himself got around 600,000, suggesting the initial distribution was a bit flat considering Wilcke got not too much less at 400,000 eth.

Update: It appears Wilcke has now confirmed the above analysis, stating he needs money for his game:

You are right. Nothing goes unnoticed, @jeffehh.



Given that you were awarded so much $ETH, you should use that money to help Ethereum. pic.twitter.com/OARA4etUn1 — Richard (@ricburton) December 26, 2019

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