“It Was A Trendy Thing To Do”: Aidi Inu Reflects On Sending Vitalik Buterin Coins After Memecoin Sell Off Woes

Sending Vitalik Buterin a hefty chunk of tokens was a mistake, the cryptocurrency Aidi Inu has admitted, after the Ethereum founder dumped his accumulated memecoins earlier this week, crashing their prices.

Planet Crypto spoke to Chris Eyong, the Aidi Finance Core Lead about the sell-off. He said Aidi never thought the Ethereum founder would move the coins from his address.

"The assumption was that his wallet was a cold wallet," Eyong said. "So sending the tokens to his wallet would be akin to burning them."

So, why did Aidi, and countless other tokens, send Buterin their coins?

Aidi Inu Hoped For A Burn

At first, Aidi thought nothing of the decision, citing the many other coins that came before it. "We just thought it was a trendy thing to do," Eyong said.

Sending coins to Buterin's address was a common marketing stunt for new cryptocurrencies attempting to ride on May's altcoin wave. Even after the recent sell-off, new projects still send their tokens to his wallet.

Aidi sent Buterin their tokens after he had already publicly burned his 41% share of SHIB. Here, he told devs in a note that he wanted no more of their new projects.

However, they were not aware of this until June - some time after the burn happened, Eyong said.

"When we became aware of what happened with SHIB, did take some measures to protect us in case something like this happened."

To minimise the impact, 3% of VERSE token transactions - Aidi's second Ethereum-based token - goes towards buying and subsequently burning AIDI. Aidi did not send any VERSE to Buterin.

AIDI came out the sell-off in a better position than other memecoins. However, Eyong noted it has had a lasting impact on the token.

"What it's caused is uncertainty and fear," Eyong said. "We’ve had a lot of people who’ve had to sell for less than they would have ever normally done because of the panic that is instilled in them, causing them to lose huge amounts of money."

The Aidi lead also said that future ecosystem plans have been put on hold while they attempt to rebuild. Eyong said: "Funds we had reserved for marketing and promotions, unfortunately, will have to go towards building a liquidity pool,"

While Eyong accepted Aidi's mistake, he still noted the damage made by Buterin’s decision.

“We’re talking about projects with 100s and 1000s of community members, so doing such a thing impacts the lives of a lot of people."

Eyong also said that after the AIDI team found out about Buterin’s SHIB burn, they attempted to contact him. According to the Aidi lead, the project emailed asking Buterin to burn their token, or send it back so they could burn it. They received no response.

Buterin has not publicly mentioned his most recent memecoin sell-off. In a note following the SHIB burn, he said:

For anyone making coins (or DAOs, or whatever else) in the future, PLEASE DO NOT GIVE ME COINS ON POWER IN YOUR PROJECT WITHOUT MY CONSENT!

Read More: Shibarium Blockchain: Shiba Inu Coin Layer-2 Is The Next Step For SHIB

Image: Aidi Finance