The Day I Sold 70,000 $ETH at $1,200 — ETH Co-founder

I still remember the day I pushed for the Ethereum Foundation to sell 70,000 $ETH . It was late 2017, the market was wild, prices were climbing fast, and everyone thought it would just keep going forever. I wasn’t so sure. I knew if we kept holding everything and the market crashed, we’d risk not having enough to keep the project running at full speed.

So I convinced the team to make the sale. We moved it at a price that, in hindsight, was basically the peak. That one move doubled the Foundation’s runway, meaning we could fund development, research, and grants for years without worrying about where the money would come from.

It wasn’t some perfect market prediction. It was just about protecting the mission. If you’re building something meant to last decades, you can’t bet it all on short-term swings. That decision let us keep pushing forward no matter what happened next.