Ethereum Investor Turns $7,000 Into $27,000,000 on New Years Eve Trade: On-Chain Data

An Ethereum (ETH) investor recently turned $7,000 in ETH they received in 2014 into $27 million worth of another crypto asset.

The blockchain-tracking Twitter account Lookonchain first reported that an Ethereum initial coin offering (ICO) participant swapped 22,340 ETH for 20,544.14 WSTETH on the last day of 2022.

The ETH ICO happened in 2014. At the time, the Ethereum investor received 150,000 ETH in total at the ETH ICO price of about $0.31. The value of that 22,340 ETH at the time would have been only around $6,925, and the 20,544.14 WSTETH the investor traded for was worth $27 million.

“An ETH ICO participant swapped 22,340 ETH for 20,544.14 wstETH ($27 million) on the last day of 2022.

This ETH ICO participant received 150,000 ETH at Ethereum Genesis, the ETH ICO price is ~$0.31.”

WSTETH is the wrapped version of Lido Staked Ether (STETH). Lido offers decentralized liquid staking on Ethereum 2.0 with the ERC20 stETH token on a 1-to-1 basis for ETH, allowing potential rewards proportional to the staked amount compared to the total ETH staked overall.

Explains the Lido website,

“Wrapping stETH creates a DeFi-compatible version of the stETH token which allows for easier integrations with DeFi protocols including Uniswap and MakerDao.”

Ethereum is trading at $1,254 at time of writing. The second-ranked crypto asset by market cap is up more than 2% in the past 24 hours and more than 5% in the past seven days. ETH is more than 74% down from its all-time high of $4,878, which it hit in November 2021.

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