He’s the world’s youngest crypto billionaire
Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin has donated over $1 billion in cryptocurrency to the India Covid Relief Fund.
Buterin, who recently became the youngest known crypto billionaire, made the donation by offloading huge amounts of crypto that he was gifted by the creators of Shiba Inu coin (SHIB), Dogelon (ELON) and Akita Inu (AKITA), all currencies based on the dog-themed memes following the staggering rise of Dogecoin.
Forbes reports that in just one transaction, Buterin donated 50 trillion SHIB tokens, with a value of $1.2 billion, to the India Covid Relief Fund set up by Indian tech entrepreneur Sandeep Nailwal.
This isn’t Buterin’s first crypto donation to the charity either. In April he donated $600,000 in ether and maker (MKR) tokens to the fund.
Nailwal took to Twitter to thank Buterin for his generosity, and assured SHIB investors tyhat the funds would be spent responsibly.
He wrote: “We will not do anything which hurts any community specially the retail community involved with SHIB.”
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 AggLayer. polygon 💜 (@sandeepnailwal) May 12, 2021
However the donation may have a negative impact.
The tokens were reportedly gifted to Buterin on the premise that he wouldn’t sell them or pass them on to anyone.
Shiba Token’s website states that 50% of the coin’s total supply was ‘burnt’ to Buterin, effectively removing that half from circulation. Some market experts have suggested that Buterin could ‘rug’ SHIB holders by selling the coins and turning the marketing stunt against the creators and holders.
Since Buterin made the donation to the Covid charity, the price of the tokens has dropped significantly. According to Coinbase, Shiba Inu is down 45%, Dogelon Mars is down almost 70% and Akita Inu is down more than 58% over the past 24 hours, at the time of writing.
Crucially what this means is that the actual aid received by the fund may end up being much less than first envisaged if the value of the tokens continue to fall.
