The Ethereum Foundation (EF) announced that it completed an over-the-counter (OTC) sale of 5,000 ETH over the weekend. Proceeds from the sale will be used to support core businesses and other activities, the group said in a disclosure.
Ethereum Foundation sells $10 million ETH to BitMine
In a March 14 post on social media platform X, the Ethereum Foundation said it completed 5,000 ETH OTC transactions worth approximately $10.21 million. EF identified BitMine Immersion Technologies, the world’s largest corporate holder of Ether, as the counterparty (buyer) for this over-the-counter transaction.
The Ethereum Foundation revealed that Ether tokens will be sold to BitMine at an average price of $2,042.96. Therefore, this transaction could be seen as a new acquisition for BitMine, an ETH treasury company that currently holds over 4.5 million ether worth about $9.3 billion.
EF revealed that on-chain transactions will be generated from the Safe multisig wallet, the proceeds of which will be directed towards the foundation’s core operations and activities, including protocol research and development (R&D), ecosystem development, community grant funding, etc.
The organization also said the transaction is part of its ongoing financial management activities based on recently published policies. The foundation disclosed in its June 2025 financial policy that it will sell Ether tokens to maintain its fiat assets against its Opex (operating expense) buffer target.
Other strategies for Ether holdings include staking, with over 2,000 ETH deployed so far and plans to supply approximately 70,000 ETH to validators using open source infrastructure from third-party providers.
The sale to BitMine is the second such transaction in less than a year. In July 2025, the Ethereum Foundation sold 10,000 ETH over-the-counter to Sharplink Gaming, another ETH treasury company, in a transaction worth $25.7 million at an average price of $2,572.37.
Ethereum price overview
This over-the-counter route of trading means that the Ethereum price does not face the bearish pressure typically associated with centralized exchange sales. Last September, the foundation announced plans to sell 10,000 ETH through public exchanges, sparking criticism from crypto enthusiasts.
As of this writing, the price of ETH is around $2,086, reflecting a decline of over 1% over the past 24 hours. This previous day’s decline was not enough to erase the altcoin’s weekly rally of nearly 7% over the past seven days.
The price of ETH on the daily timeframe | Source: ETHUSDT chart on TradingView
Featured image from iStock, chart from TradingView
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