Vitalik Buterin Burns $6B in SHIB Tokens, Says He Doesn't Want the 'Power'

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has burned 90% of his Shiba Inu coin (SHIB) holdings, an amount worth $6.7 billion.

The trove of more than 410 trillion tokens was sent to a dead blockchain address late on Sunday, taking them out of circulation.

Buterin had been given half of SHIB’s total supply in recent weeks in what appeared to be a marketing stunt.

“I've decided to burn 90% of the remaining shiba tokens in my wallet. The remaining 10% will be sent to a (not yet decided) charity with similar values to cryptorelief (preventing large-scale loss of life) but with a more long-term orientation,” he said in a note attached to another transaction at the same time.

Last week, Buterin gave 50 trillion SHIB tokens (worth around $1.2 billion at the time) to an India COVID-19 relief fund set up by Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal.

Labelling itself a “DOGE killer,” SHIB has seen a price increase of nearly 900% in the last two weeks, culminating in an all-time high of $0.00003791 May 10 and listings on major exchanges such as Binance and Huobi.

The remaining half of SHIB’s supply is locked for liquidity on decentralized finance platform Uniswap.

Buterin also said in his note that he would prefer makers of cryptocurrencies give them to charities and not to him. “I don't *want* to be a locus of power of that kind,” he said.

The news of Buterin’s actions has not had any significant effect on SHIB’s price, despite a small bump to $0.00001880 immediately after, according to CoinGecko. Since then, it has pulled back and is hovering at around $0.000016 at press time.

See also: Binance’s Indian Crypto Exchange Lists SHIB Token as Vitalik Gift Garners Local Press