By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 24th, 2024
Vitalik Buterin offloaded nearly 50 million SHIB coins through wallet transactions while donating the proceeds of the sale to India’s Crypto Covid Relief Fund. He also donated to the Ethereum-based fundraising platform Gitcoin.
On Wednesday, May 12, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin offloaded several of the dog-themed meme coins leading to their major price correction. Buterin had received these tokens through an unusual distribution strategy.
The developers of three tokens – Shiba Inu (SHIB), Akita Inu (AKITA) and Dogelon Mars (ELON) – had sent the coins to Buterin’s public Ethereum address. These wallets owned by Buterin also registered numerous swaps and token transfers. Reportedly, Buterin sold a total of 50 million SHIB coins valued at nearly $1.2 billion.
While this happened, Buterin has forwarded all the money as charity to India’s Crypto Covid Relief Fund. As the Asian country battles through one of the biggest pandemics, Buterin’s support comes at the right time. Polygon (previously known as Matic) founder Sandeep Nailwal started the India Covid Relief Fund last month.
This offloading of SHIB coins led to massive price correction after the dog-themed meme coin recently shot to fame. At press time, SHIB is trading 29% down at a price of $0.000019 with a market cap of $7.7 billion. This offloading by Buterin led to SHIB losing nearly $5 billion in valuations in the last 24 hours.
Polygon’s Sandeep also thanked Buterin for this benevolent gesture. However, he also noted that there’s no intention to hurt the retail community of SHIB investors.
Thanks @VitalikButerin
One thing we have learnt from Ethereum and @VitalikButerin is importance of community
We will not do anything which hurts any community specially the retail community involved with $SHIB
We will act responsibly!
Plz dont worry $SHIB holders. https://t.co/M4GxTR0JAn
— Sandeep | Polygon 💜 Build Together! (@sandeepnailwal) May 12, 2021
“We thank @VitalikButerin for his donation of 50,693,552,078,053 SHIBA to @CryptoRelief_. We plan to do a thoughtful liquidation to ensure we meet our COVID relief goals. Thus, we have decided to convert the donation slowly over a period of time,” notes the official handle of India’s Crypto Covide Relief Fund.
Ethereum Users Thank Buterin for This Move with Dog-Themed Coins
The latest craze around the Ethereum-based dog-themed meme coins was driving the network fees north. This happened as meme coin creators were sending a large number of coins to the Ethereum chief in recent times. Thus, the overall transaction fee on the Ethereum network was shooting high last week. Check the below thread to get access to the entire data on Etherscan and know Buterin was up to.
Vitalik is starting to dump dog tokens. https://t.co/9R4zwQ6bS3 pic.twitter.com/8C6NeYwd3y
— Larry Cermak (@lawmaster) May 12, 2021
In addition to the SHIB coin, Buterin also sent $431 million of AKITA to Gitcoin, which is a public Ethereum-based fundraising platform as per Etherscan. In the last 24 hours, Shiba Inu is down 30%, Akita Inu is down 50% and Dogelon Mars is down 73%.