Vitalik Buterin Dumps Memecoins Burned To Him, Crashing Token Prices


Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin sold off his memecoin holdings last night, causing chaos for the cryptocurrencies that burned him the tokens in the first place.

Buterin transferred the likes of Shih Tzu (SHIH), Dogey-Inu (DINU), Huskey Token (HUSKY), Kishu Inu (KISHU), Baby Shiba (BHIBA) and Aidi Inu (AIDI) to Uniswap in return for Wrapped Ethereum (WETH).

He then swapped 50 WETH for Proof of Humanity's Universal Basic Income token (UBI), burning 1,871,049 UBI and taking it out of circulation.

Here’s how those memecoins responded.

Vitalik Burns UBI (and Memecoin Hodlers)

Buterin’s sell-offs triggered huge crashes for the coins involved. The losses in the past 24 hours are as follows:

  • Shih Tzu: -51.5%
  • Dogey-Inu: -19%
  • Husky: -55.4%
  • Kishu Inu: -10.2%
  • Baby Shiba Inu: -10.5%
  • Aidi Inu: -21.1%

With losses of this size, some holders took to Twitter to express their anger at Buterin for hitting their portfolios.

Many holders asked Buterin to burn the coins, rather than selling them off. Burning coins takes them out of circulation, which could push the value of other coins up by increasing the scarcity – an issue faced by countless memecoins that have trillions of coins circulating.

The AstroElon token, which previously sent 50% of its supply to Buterin but has yet to be sold, also asked the Ethereum founder to burn their wallets and allow their ecosystem to live on.

Buterin previously warned developers against sending him their memecoins. Developers would burn coins to Buterin, one of the most recognised individuals in cryptocurrency, as part of their marketing campaigns. After clearing out his wallet in May, including burning over $7bn worth of SHIB, the crypto billionaire said:

But 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! I don’t want to be a locus of power of that kind. Better to just print the coins into the hands of a worth charity directly (though do talk to them first).

Even after these sell-offs, it appears various tokens are still sending assets to Buterin's address. This includes two UBI 'inspirations: UBI Inu and Universal Basic Inu.

Floki Inu, another dog-inspired cryptocurrency, reassured its holders that Floki did not send Buterin any tokens. “You can continue to trade FLOKI safely with the realization that FLOKI is trustless and decentralized to a great extent,” it said on Twitter. “You won't have a Vitalik dumping on you because no single individual has such power.”

UBI spiked from $0.03 to $1.39 after the burn, only to drop to $0.12 an hour later. It is currently at $0.60 - up over 1500% in 24 hours.

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

[Image: CoinMarketCap/Steve Jennings via Flickr under CC 2.0]

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