Vitalik Buterin, the Russian-Canadian co-founder of the world’s second largest cryptocurrency firm, Ethereum, has donated over $1 billion (roughly Rs 7,358 crores) in cryptocurrency to the India COVID Relief Fund and a range of other charities as the country battles the second wave of pandemic.
According to the report in Forbes, A large portion of Buterin’s donation was made using massive amounts of dog-themed ‘meme coins’, which had been gifted to him for free by the creators of the Shiba Inu coin (SHIB), Dogelon (ELON) and Akita Inu (AKITA).
Buterin transferred 500 ETH and over 50 trillion SHIB (Shiba Inu), a meme coin, worth around $1.14 billion at the time of the transaction, to the India COVID-Crypto Relief Fund, the report adds.
Soon after the donation was made public, it created panic among some of the invetsors, contributing to over 35% drop in SHIB’s price on Wednesday. The Forbes report also points out that the Shiba Inu tokens were given to Buterin on the premise that he would never sell them. According to Coinbase, Shiba Inu is down 36 per cent, Dogelon Mars is down 65 per cent and Akita Inu is down more than 50 per cent. So the charities would in effect get much less than the original amount pledged.
Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of crypto organization Polygon and who put together the Indian relief fund, took to Twitter to assure investors that he won’t do anything that hurts “any community specially the retail community involved with SHIB.”
Developers of the Shiba Inu token have reportedly sent 50 percent of the SHIB token supply to Buterin’s wallet over the past year. SHIB has successfully courted retail investors in China and other markets following recent surges in the Dogecoin cryptocurrency. In April, Buterin donated around $600,000 in ether and maker tokens to Nailwal’s Covid relief fund last month.
