New research from Arkham Intelligence indicates that the wallet holding the majority of Ethereum (ETH) is not an individual, an exchange, or an ETF issuer, but rather the ETH2 Beacon Deposit Contract. Currently, this contract manages over 72.4 million ETH, valued approximately at $252 billion, constituting about 60% of Ethereum’s total supply.

Ethereum’s Major Players

Among individual investors, Rain Lohmus, founder of Estonian bank LHV, remains the largest known holder of ETH. In the 2014 presale, he purchased 250,000 ETH for around $75,000, a sum that has skyrocketed to nearly $871 million in today’s market. Unfortunately, Lohmus cannot access these funds due to lost private keys.

Moreover, the second-largest holder identified is Vitalik Buterin, one of Ethereum’s co-founders, who retains around 240,000 ETH, valued at approximately $840 million.

In addition to individual holders, centralized exchanges and institutional investors manage vast quantities of ETH. For instance, Binance possesses roughly 4.09 million ETH, whereas asset management firm BlackRock owns about 3.94 million ETH, particularly linked to its iShares Ethereum Trust ETF. Coinbase ranks next, with approximately 3.5 million ETH distributed over various addresses, including cold storage and staking reserves.

Following these major players are Upbit, Robinhood, Kraken, OKX, and Bitfinex, all notable institutional holders.

Government Holdings and Stolen Assets

Arkham’s investigation also highlights government wallets among Ether’s largest holders, with the U.S. government controlling about 60,000 ETH. This quantity largely includes assets seized from criminal activities, such as cases related to the Potapenko/Turogin matter and the Bitfinex hacker recovery efforts.

In addition, several high-profile hacker addresses retain considerable amounts of ETH. The Gatecoin exploiter’s wallet, for example, still holds more than 156,000 ETH stolen in 2016. More recently, native Layer 2 bridges have accumulated significant ETH, including 833,000 ETH deposited in Arbitrum and about 723,000 ETH in the Base bridge. Overall, current on-chain data reveals that staking contracts, exchanges, ETF issuers, bridges, and custody platforms are now the principal holders of Ether.