Ethereum Founder Linked Charity Kanro Making Large USDC Transfers: Here Are Possible Reasons

Kanro, a health organization linked to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, has been making successive USDC transfers to a multisig wallet and exchanges.

Crypto data platform Arkham Intelligence marked the Kanro transfers, an ongoing trend since at least Oct. 14. The address has transferred out a total of 15.4 million USDC for reasons that remain unknown at the reporting time.

Kanro Fund Inflow and Outflow

The largest of the recent transfers features 14.93 million USDC sent to Gemini on Oct. 16. Additionally, Coinbase received almost 500,000 USDC in two tranches on Oct. 14. The first tranche involves a deposit worth $250,000 with the second pegged at $249,000.

Vitalik Buterin introduced Kanro in June as one of the outfits that can accelerate health research post-COVID-19. The mission of Kanro entails researching global solutions to deal with the new crown endemic crisis.

As Vitalik revealed then, Kanro’s funding comes exclusively from Crypto Relief, a charity entity led by Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal. Since its inception, the wallet has been receiving inflows, with its current holdings pegged at $74,566,799.57 per data from Etherscan.

Recently, addresses controlled by Vitalik Buterin show a history of different on-chain transfers. In September, 400 ETH valued at $630,000 moved to Coinbase. Assumptions remain that the 400 ETH was part of a 3000 ETH deposit worth $4.7 million deposited into the address less than a month earlier. 

This, alongside a $1 million worth of ETH transfer to Coinbase in August, are a few examples featuring large amounts of transactions tied to Vitalik-controlled addresses.

While this latter outflow sparked selloff fears, the Kanro outflow comes with several explanations, including potential disbursement for research purposes.

Outlook on Ethereum

At the moment, Ethereum remains unmoved by the speculations around the USDC outflow. Despite the links with Vitalik, ETH is up 1.18% to $1,585.47 as trading volume has topped $8 billion, up 70% overnight.