The founder of Ethereum (ETH), Vitalik Buterin, has on Monday sold a large amount of crypto. Analysis company Lookonchain reports on the basis of Etherscan data that Buterin has exchanged about $ 700,000 in tokens. Buterin has received these “shitcoins” as gifts over the past few years. He exchanged the tokens for ether. It is not yet known what Buterin will do with the proceeds.
vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) is selling his free shitcoins.
Currently sold 50B $MOPS for 1.25 $ETH($2K), sold 10B $CULT for 58 $ETH($91K), sold 500T $SHIK for 380 $ETH($600K).https://t.co/SboWZsO8WY pic.twitter.com/xNaRTeVM7K
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) March 7, 2023
Vitalik dumps shitcoins
The tokens Buterin sold were CULT, SHIK and MOPS. They are all so called memecoins, the latter of which actually rose dramatically after Buterin was revealed to have dumped it. MOPS’s share price rose an unprecedented 2000% this morning.
There’s a good chance Buterin won’t keep the proceeds for himself. During the pandemic, Buterin donated more than $1 billion to India’s covid fund. He donated the $1 billion in the form of Shiba Inu (SHIB) tokens that he also received as a gift.
More recently, he also donated to organizations active in the earthquake-affected area in Turkey and Syria. He then donated 410 ether to aid organizations, then worth about a little over $200,000.
Buterin is critical of Ethereum
As mentioned, Buterin is the founder of the Ethereum network, but that does not mean that he has no criticism of his network. He reported last week in a blog post that the network still has a lot of work to do.
For example, it is currently impossible to use ethereum in everyday life for simple transactions. Buterin wrote that he has tried to pay with ether in coffee shops in the past. However, high transaction costs and other technical defects made this process considerably more difficult.
Although transaction costs are a lot lower than at times in the past bull market, they are still on the high side. According to Dune Analytics a transaction on the DeFi platform Uniswap currently costs just over five dollars. A regular transaction of ethereum costs just under one dollar.
Much less than a year or two ago, but before we can buy a cup of coffee with ETH, as Buterin says, there is still a lot to improve.