According to on-chain data, Ethereum co-founder Jeffrey Wilcke transferred approximately $262 million worth of 105,736 Ether to the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken on May 20, nearly emptying Wilcke's entire Ether holdings, leaving only about 268 Ether in his wallet.

Jeffrey Wilcke is a key figure in the early development of Ethereum. He is a Dutch software developer known for co-founding Ethereum. His career began at the Utrecht School of Arts (Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht) in creative education, and he later worked as a programmer at Noxa and co-founded Agile Pandas.

In 2013, Wilcke joined the founding team of Ethereum and developed the Go Ethereum (Geth) client, which is the cornerstone of the network's infrastructure. His technical contributions, including addressing the DDoS attack in 2016, were crucial to Ethereum's early success. After leaving Ethereum in 2018, Wilcke founded Grid Games, shifting his focus to game development.

Although Wilcke has stepped back from blockchain development, his recent large-scale Ether transfer has still drawn significant attention from market analysts and the crypto community, showing that even as he shifts to new ventures, he still has a profound impact on the cryptocurrency space.

The act of depositing such a large amount of Ether into Kraken has sparked widespread speculation. Market observers are discussing whether this indicates a potential sale, asset diversification, or merely a custody transfer. In fact, Jeffrey Wilcke had previously conducted significant dollar transfers of Ether in 2024, which also drew attention.

Jeffrey Wilcke's response

After the news of the coin transfer spread, Wilcke did not directly respond to the community's hot topics in his latest community posts, but expressed his support for Ethereum through multiple posts.

He stated that Ethereum is 'waking up,' and he himself is not chasing prices. He remarked, 'Ethereum is getting lively. Developers are deploying code. Clients are handling updates. Rollups are constantly expanding. This transformation is not reflected in the hype on Twitter but exists in repositories, commits, and testnets.'

Wilcke further pointed out that Ethereum's current development is better than ever, mentioning that ten years ago they struggled to manage and resolve block synchronization. Now everyone is building data availability layers, modular execution, re-staking, and danksharding. These are not false; they are advancements. 'Ethereum is not just a blockchain; it is also an infrastructure that is composable, secure, and highly adaptable.'