Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Donates $700 Million Worth of Crypto to Charity

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of the crypto asset Ethereum (ETH), has donated a total of $60 million to various charities. The proceeds from the bulk sales of “meme tokens” such as SHIBA, AKITA, and ELON were said to have been donated.

Cryptocurrency

The rise of meme tokens

So-called “meme brands” have been gaining attention recently, including Dogecoin (DOGE), which has already quickly reached the fourth place in market capitalization in the previous few days. On the 10th of this week, the market capitalization of the SHIBA INU (SHIBA) token, which claims to be a “Dogecoin killer,” and the AKITA INU (AKITA) token associated with a Japanese dog breed have risen to the 15th place. DOGE’s favorite Elon Musk. Dogelon Mars (ELON) and others who play with him have attracted the interest of speculators.

In addition to the dog motif, both feature a unique “burn” system in their token supply system.

The leading Shiba Inu will lock 50% of its total issuance in Uniswap, and the remaining 50% will be sent to the address of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin. The same tokens are also distributed for AKITA tokens and ELON tokens.

Vitalik Buterin's ETH address is already publicly available and holds 300,000 ETH, worth more than $10 billion, but Vitalik began to sell meme stocks one by one on the 13th. It is said that it traded 660 billion SHIB, 140 billion AKITA, and 43 billion ELON with Ethereum and replaced it with 15,719 ETH, equivalent to $700 million.

The aforementioned stocks have plummeted in response to the surge following Mr. Vitalik's massive selling.

SHIBA INU (SHIBA)

Source: CoinMarketCap

Akita

Source: CoinMarketCap

Dogecoin (DOGE)

Source: CoinMarketCap

Donation Details

It is believed that the 7 billion yen worth of ETH obtained by Mr. Vitalik through the sale has been donated to the following organizations.

Giveaway: 13,292 ETH Methuselah Foundation: 1,000 ETH and 430 billion ELON Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI): 1,050 ETH Crypto Covid: 500 ETH and 50.6 trillion SHIB Gitcoin Community Multisig: 49 trillion AKITA Charter Urban Research Institute: 500 ETH NPO Givewell received the most donations. Givewell is a non-profit independent organization that aims to evaluate charities to maximize the impact of donations.

We have also donated to the Methuselah Foundation, a medical charity that aims to extend life, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, which conducts artificial intelligence (AI) research, and a relief fund for people infected with the new coronavirus in India. We have also donated to Gitcoin, an open source developer platform.

In the past, Vitalik has cited cryptocurrency, life extension, social technology, online education, urban development, poverty eradication, and space as areas of interest.

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