In one of the most monumental collapses in recent memory – the absolute worst, according to some analysts – Bitcoin (BTC,) Ethereum (ETH,) and other notable altcoins have lost a substantial amount of value in recent weeks. However, it is no secret that at the start of the year, there was another dropdown in prices around crypto markets: BTC was worth almost $19,000 in January and ETH went as far as $1,377.72 on January 13th.
Both digital assets, as well as other coins in the top 20 by market cap, started to rapidly lose value from that point on: Bitcoin was hovering around $6,500 for most of November, and ETH was flirting with $210 when the collapse began on November 14th.
ETH Has Lost more than 90 Percent of its Value
Now, Bitcoin is all the way down to the $3,700 range, and Ethereum is clinging onto $100, exchanging hands at $114 at the time of this writing. ETH’s co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, has seemingly lost more than $460 million since the start of the collapse in January, considering that the top altcoin has lost more than 90% of value since that date.
Some of the ETH user community has offered, sarcastically, of course, to “help” out the Ethereum boss with donations: his wallet currently holds something in the neighborhood of $40 million dollars with ETH at today’s value.
When the coin reached its all-time high back in January, Buterin had around ETH 375,000. Taking into account that, since that moment, the project boss has not gotten any substantial payments in ETH into his wallet and that he has sent around ETH 20,000, he has seen a multi-billion loss.
To be more precise, the amount of ETH present in his wallet in January was the equivalent of $514 million at the price of January 13th. Nowadays, the price of the top altcoin in the world is now $114, and Buterin’s “balance” would be something in the neighborhood of $40 million, a steep drop-off.
There is no denying that Ethereum has been a success since the moment of its inception in the crypto market: in September, It was named as the most profitable ICO (Initial Coin Offering.) Messari.io data has Ethereum’s ROI at more than 12,000 percent over a three-year period.
The Strongest Hands
However, the month of November has been extremely difficult for BTC, ETH, and the whole crypto market. The Buterin’s case was posted on Reddit, and the user called it “The Strongest Hands.” However, the community quickly corrected the original poster, with user u/HCS8B saying that “the strongest hands are those that are down 90 percent and still holding, not some millionaire guy whose profits are +10,000 percent.”
The “sarcastic” help offer on Reddit came from u/BitKahn: “Poor guy is only worth 37M now, how can I donate to help?” he wrote. A more serious approach was offered by Redditor u/unbounded_recursion, who stated that “for anyone else, this is why you should have sold some. For founders, it is tricky. The founder selling some of their hoards might signal a loss of confidence, affecting the prices negatively.”
By Andres Chavez
