Ethereum’s (ETH) initial coin offering (ICO) in 2014 Q3 raised approximately $16 million in 42 days at a final estimated price of $0.311 per token. Early investors have sold their positions over the years, but some are still holding part of these coins.
Notably, an ICO Ethereum wallet address deposited 3,000 ETH ($6.19 million) to the Kraken exchange on November 29. This pre-historic whale acquired 20,000 ETH for $6,200 in the initial coin offering, according to SpotOnChain.
Considering Ethereum is trading at $2,055 by press time, this early investor profited over 660,000% with this single sell.
Interestingly, on-chain activity shows further purchases of 1,004 ETH at an average price of $771.7 per token from January 2018 to February 2020. It also deposited a total of 15,735 ETH at an average price of $1,555 so far. There is still 5,172 ETH behind, worth approximately $10.7 million.
The Ethereum (ETH) ICO
The Ethereum Foundation announced the ICO on July 22, 2014, starting at a price of 0.0005 BTC per ETH. This means 1 BTC bought 2,000 Ethers at that time, but the price progressed to a final 1,337 ETH per Bitcoin (BTC).
Therefore, it is widely accepted that Ethereum had a final price of $0.311 by August 30, 2014, according to ICODrops. Estimations suggest a total of $16 million raised with the selling, besides 12,009,990.50 ETH kept by the Foundation, as reported by Galaxy. Essentially, close to 72 million ETH were initially distributed from the Genesis block.
Ethereum currently has 120.24 million ETH circulating in the cryptocurrency market. The first 72 million accrues for nearly 60% of its entirety. Meanwhile, on average, new tokens are distributed to staking validators every 14 seconds.
