Vitalik Buterin Burns $6B in SHIB Tokens, Says He Doesn’t Want the ‘Power’
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has burned 90% of his Shiba Inu coin (SHIB) holdings, an amount worth $6.7 billion.
The trove of more than 410 trillion tokens was sent to a dead blockchain address late on Sunday, taking them out of circulation.
Buterin had been given half of SHIB’s total supply in recent weeks in what appeared to be a marketing stunt.
Related: Vitalik vs. Dog Money: Recapping a Crazy Week in Crypto History
“I’ve decided to burn 90% of the remaining shiba tokens in my wallet. The remaining 10% will be sent to a (not yet decided) charity with similar values to cryptorelief (preventing large-scale loss of life) but with a more long-term orientation,” he said in a note attached to another transaction at the same time.
Last week, Buterin gave 50 trillion SHIB tokens (worth around $1.2 billion at the time) to an India COVID-19 relief fund set up by Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal.
Labelling itself a “DOGE killer,” SHIB has seen a price increase of nearly 900% in the last two weeks, culminating in an all-time high of $0.00003791 May 10 and listings on major exchanges such as Binance and Huobi.
The remaining half of SHIB’s supply is locked for liquidity on decentralized finance platform Uniswap.
Related: Coinbase to Speed Up Process for Approving New Coins, Add DOGE: CEO
Buterin also said in his note that he would prefer makers of cryptocurrencies give them to charities and not to him. “I don’t *want* to be a locus of power of that kind,” he said.
The news of Buterin’s actions has not had any significant effect on SHIB’s price, despite a small bump to $0.00001880 immediately after, according to CoinGecko. Since then, it has pulled back and is hovering at around $0.000016 at press time.
See also: Binance’s Indian Crypto Exchange Lists SHIB Token as Vitalik Gift Garners Local Press
