Vitalik Buterin Unveils What He Did With 500 Trillion SHIB Donated by Ryoshi in 2021

Vitalik Buterin, one of the Ethereum founders and the platform’s frontman, has posted a tweet about his donations over the past five years, including a large number of SHIB meme coins. In 2021, the mysterious founder of Shiba Inu, Ryoshi, sent Vitalik half of the initial quadrillion SHIB supply as a sign of respect and acknowledgement.

Vitalik chose not to keep those coins, though. Here’s what he did with them.

Vitalik Buterin and 500 trillion SHIB + other “next DOGE” coins

By publishing his tweet, Vitalik reacted to numerous X posts, saying that he allegedly donated a lot of funds to the Future of Life Institute several years ago, which also connects him to “various policy actions that they take.”

Buterin decided to “clear the record” regarding his connection to the aforementioned organization, sharing the details of how he disposed of half a quadrillion SHIB, as well as other meme coins he received from various sources in 2021.

In early 2021, Vitalik received substantial amounts of Shiba Inu and other dog-themed coins. He believes he received those “presents” because the creators of those coins wanted to use the “Vitalik owns half of our supply” scheme as a marketing gimmick and thus turn their coins into “the next Dogecoin.”

Vitalik also stressed that back then, the market value of those tokens quickly surged and their cumulative “book value” surpassed one billion dollars.

Vitalik gets rid of SHIB and other meme coins

Vitalik then expected those coins to be a bubble that would “pop quickly” with a massive price drop to follow. Therefore, he sold what he could for ETH and used the proceeds to make donations. In particular, he sent some SHIB to the Crypto Relief initiative in India and to Sandeep.

He also transferred some coins to the Future of Life Institute. He pointed out that he expected to cash those SHIB coins for a maximum of $10- $25 million. Instead, he managed to convert it into half a billion dollars.

However, it is known that Vitalik also burned around 410 trillion Shiba Inu, thus sending roughly half of the meme coin’s supply out of circulation for good. Since then, the SHIB community, together with the team, continues burning SHIB coins regularly to increase the coin’s scarcity.