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After underperforming Bitcoin for weeks, Ethereum saw a healthy rally this week that saw it reach $245 on Saturday — the highest price since early March. Prices have since retraced by upwards of four percent, but an increasing number of prominent investors have supported the asset, limiting downside.
Top VC starts accumulating Ethereum “again”
You may not know his name but Garry Tan, a Microsoft employee turned early executive of $20 billion startup Palantir turned founder of Initialized Capital, was one of the earliest cryptocurrency bulls in Silicon Valley.
According to this article from venture accelerator 500 Startups, his fund, Initialized Capital, was the “earliest investor in trailblazers like Coinbase and Instacart.” That’s to say, he was a seed investor in Coinbase, worth $8 billion as of its last valuation. By his own accounts, he also holds some Bitcoin, the first of which was given to him by Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong.
And now, it has been made clear he also owns Ethereum too.
Started accumulating $ETH again
— Garry Tan (@garrytan) May 31, 2020
On May 30, he wrote that he has “started accumulating ETH again,” adding in subsequent comments that he is doing so for the “long term hold” rather than short-term trading due to taxes.
As a pertinent aside, the Initialized Capital managing partner said he has continually been “stacking sats.” This would suggest that he is — or at least was — more optimistic about Bitcoin.
Industry-wide accumulation
It isn’t clear how much he owns or how much Ethereum he is buying, but it shows the wider disposition of investors to accumulate the asset over recent months.
Speaking to Camila Russo, founder of Ethereum publication Defiant, Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevoss said on his brother and his’ crypto-asset holdings:
“We definitely own a lot of ether. They’re large and it’s a material amount. Yeah, quite large […] A couple of years back we made a concerted effort to buy a lot of ether.”
The Winkelvoss Twin added that their ETH investment is in the “same galaxy” as their ~$1 billion Bitcoin stash.
Unlabeled, unknown whales are also accumulating Ethereum as well.
As reported by CryptoSlate, Ethereum’s top 100 wallets (by holding size) have increased their holdings to a 10-month high, with over $4.5 billion worth of the asset in their coffers. Blockchain analytics firm Santiment, which found out about this, added that in the last two days alone (as of May 27), $30 million was deposited into these addresses.
Much of the bullish sentiment Ethereum holders have seems to be related to decentralized finance — better known as DeFi.
In the aforementioned interview, Cameron Winklevoss said that DeFi “new vista [for blockchain], a new type of system for which Bitcoin paved the way.” Other market participants have said that Ethereum is about to see a Cambrian explosion due to the adoption of DeFi and the simultaneous decline of traditional institutions.
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