Vitalik says he donated all 1,000T SHIB from unsolicited airdrop

Vitalik Buterin has disclosed what he did with the 1,000 trillion SHIB he received from the memecoin's founder, 'Ryoshi,' in what he described as an unsolicited airdrop. Buterin stated that he received a large amount of SHIB and other Dogecoin-family tokens in 2021. He speculated this was a marketing strategy for projects to claim "Vitalik holds half our supply" in an attempt to become the next Dogecoin (DOGE). At one point, the value of these unsolicited memecoins exceeded $1 billion, but he believed it was a bubble that would soon pop. He then converted as many of the memecoin assets as possible into ETH and began donating to what he called relatively "normal" charities, including $50 million to GiveWell. The remaining SHIB was donated to CryptoRelief, the Balvi Foundation, Indian medical infrastructure improvement efforts, and the Future of Life Institute, he said.