Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is liquidating memecoins sent to his publicly known wallet, according to onchain data provided by Arkham Research. At press time, Buterin has sold off or swapped several dozen tokens — including popular cryptocurrencies like CULT, DOGE and SHIB alongside a number of lesser-known tokens referencing celebrities like Elon Musk — for approximately $2.5 million worth of USDC and ETH.
Memecoin creators frequently send a portion of their total token supply to influential figures like Buterin, hoping for positive publicity that will foment a moment of virality and trading activity. Every so often, Buterin appears to offload these gifted tokens, often driving down prices, to donate the profits to various charities.
In 2021, for instance, Buterin sold more than $60 million worth of SHIB and other coins sent to his wallet as part of a publicity stunt. He donated those funds to pet interests, including longevity, AI alliance and pandemic research.
Buterin, who is estimated to be worth nearly a billion dollars based on the holdings in his public-facing address labeled with the vitalik.eth ENS name, holds hundreds of various tokens, the majority of which were likely sent to him for free. Most of these tokens are now worth pennies, if that.
His largest holding, over 240 ETH, is worth about $873 million. He also owns several million worth of AETH derivative tokens related to the Aave decentralized exchange and 10 billion worth of WHITE tokens, connected to the little-known WhiteRock tokenization platform. Buterin’s fifth largest holding is just under $1 million of wrapped ETH.
Over the past several hours, beginning around 5 A.M. UTC, Buterin has sent tokens to various trading platforms like CoW Swap, Uniswap and Kyber Network, as well as cross-chain DEX aggregator Odos. Some of these tokens are so thinly traded that it is unclear how these transactions impacted the price.
In one instance, Buterin liquidated several trillion DOBE (i.e., Dobermann) tokens, which are apparently trading up.
According to onchain data, Buterin appears to be consolidating his profits to fund his Kanro charity organization. Kanro is a philanthropic fund initially set up by Buterin to address issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Buterin has also recently donated to the privacy-focused RiseUp charity, according to his recent transactions.
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