Vitalik Buterin Has Been Dumping Dog Coins, Again - Crypto Briefing

Vitalik Buterin has sold off another $4.3 million worth of dog coins sent to his wallet over the last few months. Buterin used some of the funds to buy and burn tokens from Proof of Humanity’s UBI initiative. 

Buterin Sells Dog Coins

Vitalik Buterin has been cleaning out his wallet.

The Ethereum co-founder sold stacks of six dog coins involuntarily sent to his Ethereum wallet Tuesday. Buterin made the trades through the decentralized exchange Uniswap, dumping bags of Aidi Inu, Small Doge, Jejudoge, Baby Shiba, Kishu Inu, and HuskyToken with a combined value of over $4.3 million. 

However, due to the lack of liquidity for these niche coins, the total amount Buterin received after selling was closer to $1.8 million. The prices of the Dogecoin knockoffs have been hit hard, with the biggest loser, Baby Shiba, dropping 72%.

Following the success of meme tokens like Dogecoin earlier this year, numerous copycat projects have emerged hoping to emulate its success. The creators of these projects often send large amounts of tokens to Buterin’s wallet, hoping that his star power will lend legitimacy to their projects or act as a “token burn,” removing large amounts from circulation. 

As such, this is not the first time Buterin has cleared his wallet of these unsolicited tokens. In May, Buterin dumped large amounts of Shiba Inu, Akita Inu, and Dogelon Mars onto the market for a total of $63 million at the time. Once liquidity on exchanges ran out, Buterin started giving the tokens away, memorably donating a further $1 billion worth of Shiba Inu tokens to the India Covid-Relief Fund.

Buterin has already started using the proceeds from the latest token dump to help good causes. Transaction data from Etherscan shows that he spent almost $200,000 buying and burning 8% of Proof of Humanity’s UBI token supply. 

Proof of Humanity is a project aiming to verify human identities in a decentralized manner. The project has partnered with Democracy Earth to launch a Universal Basic Income initiative, distributing UBI tokens to all verified humans. 

By burning the UBI tokens, Buterin reduces the total supply, thus increasing the value of other holders’ tokens. Additionally, the move signals Buterin’s support for the project, with Universal Basic Income’s Santiago Siri describing the act as “the highest form of validation someone can get in the crypto space” in a Twitter post. 

This is the highest form of validation someone can get in space, and I'm happy to witness you getting it buddy. <3

— dheerajshah.eth 🦇🔊 (@DheerajShah_) October 20, 2021

While the latest dog coin purge was not as big as the previous one in May, it may not be the last. Buterin previously posted a public on-chain message urging people to stop sending him large amounts of unsolicited tokens, but it appears to have been ineffective. 

Disclaimer: At the time of writing this feature, the author owned BTC, ETH, and several other cryptocurrencies.