Who is the mysterious Ethereum whale holding $1 billion in ETH?

Estonian businessman Rain Lohmus participated in Ethereum’s 2014 initial coin offering (ICO), and is the world’s largest individual holder of around 250,000 coins valued at nearly $900 million, according to blockchain analytics platform Arkham Intelligence.

Business entrepreneur and chairman of the Supervisory Board at LHV Capital Lohmus purchased roughly $75,000 worth of ETH during the project’s ICO more than a decade ago.

The investment he made before Ethereum’s official launch has since appreciated over 11,000 times in value. However, despite sitting on one of the largest personal crypto fortunes in history, Lohmus has lost the keys to access his Ether holdings.

250,000 ETH coins out of reach, Lohmus admits

Speaking in a radio interview with Estonia’s Vikerraadio back in August, the LHV Capital chair admitted that he misplaced the private keys controlling his Ethereum wallet years ago.

Without those keys, his 250,000 ETH is permanently locked on the blockchain and is inaccessible to everyone. When Ethereum reached its all-time high price of $4,953, the coins’ values surged to levels over $1 billion.

“Perfect decentralization has other risks that you don’t usually think about,” Lohmus said in the interview. “But it’s very common for me to lose passwords. I went to renew my ID card passwords today; if it were crypto, I’d be in a big crisis again, but luckily the police and border police work.”

The Estonian entrepreneur insists he has not made serious attempts to recover the wallet, but is willing to share half the value of the lost coins with anyone capable of helping him regain access, as Cryptopolitan reported in 2023.

The Ethereum investor’s predicament is similar to that of distraught investor James Howells, a British IT worker whose ex-girlfriend accidentally discarded a hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoin in 2013.

Howells is in the dead centre of a 12-year dispute with the Newport City Council in Wales, where he repeatedly sought permission to excavate the landfill where he believes the drive lies buried, even offering to purchase the entire dump site.

According to Arkham Intelligence tracking, the Newport local’s holdings are now worth $815,616,683 at BTC current prices of $102,200.

Who holds the most ETH today?

Per Arkham Intelligence’s ranking, Lohmus is the largest individual holder of Ether with about 0.03% of total supply locked in his inaccessible wallet. The next on the list is Ethereum co-founder and Russian programmer Vitalik Buterin, whose personal wallet has about 241,000 ETH worth around $868 million.

Arkham’s analysis lists Joseph Lubin, the founder of ConsenSys, as the third largest individual holder with an estimated 243,300 ETH. Jeffrey Wilcke, another early Ethereum developer, came fourth with around 116,000 ETH, followed by “crypto millionaire” James Fickel, who holds about 57,000 ETH.

Away from individual holders, the majority of Ether resides in institutional and protocol-controlled wallets like the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Deposit Contract. The Beacon chain secures coins staked for network validation and holds 72.4 million ETH, equivalent to nearly $268 billion, or about 60% of total supply.

On the institutional collection front, Binance is the largest crypto exchange ETH holder with more than 4 million coins, followed by BlackRock with 3.94 million, Coinbase with 3.5 million, and Bitmine with 3.1 million ETH.

Arkham also identified several government-linked Ethereum wallets, including those controlled by the US government, which collectively contain around 64,700 ETH valued at $240 million.

A significant portion of the seized ETH belongs to former Oracle senior technical support engineer Brian Krewson, whose case contributed to over $140 million of the government’s accumulated crypto reserves.

Some of the largest on-chain Ethereum balances are in the control of hackers who exploited vulnerabilities in exchanges and smart contracts in the past decade.

A Gatecoin Hacker responsible for the infamous 2016 hack still holds 156,200 ETH, originally worth about $2 million at the time, but now valued at $516 million.