Ethereum Foundation sells 2,000 ETH as price hovers near $2,000

The Ethereum Foundation has sold another chunk of its namesake asset. A wallet linked to the organization offloaded 2,000 ETH, which a post on X valued at $3.87 million.

The timing is awkward. The sale landed as ETH traded close to the $2,000 to $2,100 range, a zone widely watched as critical support.

How the sale went down

The selling did not happen in one shot. According to the research findings, the wallet sold 1,000 ETH on November 10 and another 1,000 ETH on November 11, 2026.

Both batches went through CoW Protocol, an on-chain trading venue, at average prices between $2,080 and $2,130 per ETH. Proceeds were converted into USDS, a stablecoin, rather than sent straight to a bank.

Estimates of the total haul vary depending on who is counting. The X post put the figure at $3.87 million, while the research tally places proceeds at approximately $4.14 million to $4.16 million. Per day, the wallet brought in somewhere around $2.03 million to $2.13 million.

The sales also broke a quiet spell. The wallet had been inactive for roughly two weeks before the November transactions began.

Even after the selling, the Foundation is far from tapped out. The monitored wallet still held more than 24,000 ETH, worth approximately $51.46 million as of the sale dates.

A familiar pattern

This was not a one-off. The same wallet sold 2,785 ETH on October 26, 2026, at an average price of around $2,306 per ETH.

The November batches cleared a couple hundred dollars per coin below the October sale, which means the Foundation got less for each ETH the second time around.

The Foundation’s approach is rooted in its treasury management policy. That policy targets a fiat operating buffer covering about 2.5 years of operational expenses. To maintain it, the organization periodically converts portions of its ETH holdings into stablecoins.

The Foundation has also signaled that it wants to lean less on outright sales over time. It has publicly expressed plans to shift toward yield-generating strategies, including DeFi and staking, as a way to fund operations without dumping tokens on the open market.

What this means for ETH holders

The first question most traders ask is whether the Foundation’s selling moves the price. On raw size, the answer appears to be: probably not much. A sale of 2,000 ETH is modest relative to overall ETH market liquidity, a point the research findings explicitly make.

The sale size also matters for context. The 2,000 ETH sold represents a small fraction of what the wallet still holds, and the October sale was larger at 2,785 ETH.

Still, the pattern carries a real risk for holders. If ETH keeps sliding, a Foundation committed to a 2.5-year expense buffer may need to sell more coins to raise the same dollar amount.

This is where the promised pivot to staking and DeFi becomes important. If the Foundation can generate enough yield from its holdings, it could cover a meaningful share of its costs without parting with principal. Deploying treasury funds into DeFi introduces smart contract and counterparty risks that a simple stablecoin conversion does not carry. Staking locks up capital in ways that can limit flexibility if the Foundation needs cash quickly.