$1 Billion Gone: Banker Loses Access to Ethereum Fortune

That hurts: an Estonian banker lost access to his wallet holding a whopping 250,000 Ethereum, bought during the 2015 ICO.

That hurts: an Estonian banker lost access to his wallet View post on Xholding a whopping 250,000 Ethereum, bought during the ICO in 2015. Back then, that was worth about $18 million. Today, that ETH would be worth more than $1.15 billion, a gain of around 15,000 percent.

Not everyone from that era has been so unlucky. On-chain data from Lookonchain shows that another ICO participant bought about 2,300 ETH back then, now worth $9.9 million. He recently sold his ETH through Kraken.

The Ethereum ICO, held from July 22 to September 2, 2014, raised about $18.3 million by selling more than 60 million ETH. The average price was $0.31 per coin. At the time, 1 BTC got you 2,000 ETH. The proceeds were used to develop Ethereum, which officially launched in July 2015 with a total supply of 72 million ETH. About 83 percent of that went to ICO investors.

Ethereum is on the rise right now: over the past 7 days, the price climbed more than 30 percent to a new all-time high of $4,800. Investment bank Standard Chartered raised its price target to $7,500 in 2025 and a massive $25,000 in 2028, almost double its earlier forecast. ChatGPT's own prediction is between $5,100 and $5,400 by the end of the year.

The rally is being driven mainly by record inflows into spot ETH ETFs. Crypto treasury companies like BitMine and Sharplink Gaming are also continuing to buy ETH aggressively, which is shrinking supply even more.

Still, there is criticism. Bitcoin maximalist Samson Mow said, "Nobody wants to hold Ethereum for the long term." In his view, once investors see enough gains, they will dump their ETH and move the proceeds back into Bitcoin.