Vitalik Buterin Made $2M in 24 Hours Selling Meme Tokens Donated to His ENS Address

Recent onchain research by Lookonchain calculates that Vitalik Buterin accumulated 908.77 ETH, worth $2.24 million, from these sales.

Ethereum (ETH) creator Vitalik Buterin made over $2 million in the last 24 hours, continuing his selling spree of meme coins donated to his known ENS address vitalik.eth.

Recent onchain research by Lookonchain calculates that Buterin's sales from these meme coins amounted to 908.77 ETH, which is valued at $2.24 million at the time of writing. This is the last posted report on the topic, by the publishing time, but the selling spree continues.

According to the research, Ethereum creator's sales include $MOODENG, $MSTR, $EBULL, $POPCAT, $Milo, $FWOG, $TCATI, $Fwog, and $VITALIK, from larger to smaller. MOODENG was again the largest offloaded position at a nominal value of $976,000, down to $14,000 of VITALIK.

Notably, this recent selling spree marks vitalik.eth's second-largest daily token transfer count, totaling 185, on October 12, according to data Finbold retrieved from Etherscan. The previous record was on October 7, registering 344 transfers, mostly made of these meme coin sales.

Why did Vitalik Buterin receive tokens for free?

Notable figures in the cryptocurrency industry, such as Vitalik Buterin, often receive tokens for free. Specifically, Buterin's publicly known Ethereum address, vitalik.eth—enabled by the Ethereum Name Service (ENS)—facilitates these gifts.

There are several reasons for this activity, ranging from donations acknowledging his work to controversial marketing tactics. For instance, new projects might send tokens to influential individuals to imply their endorsement.

One early example of this strategy was Shiba Inu (SHIB), a meme coin that reportedly sent a significant portion of its total supply to Buterin. This move led the market to believe that Ethereum's creator supported the project and held it in his personal portfolio.

The tactic succeeded for SHIB, and Buterin later donated billions of dollars from the gains to a non-profit organization.

Vitalik Buterin will donate all profits from these meme coin sales

Interestingly, Buterin will donate all profits originating from these meme coin sales to charity, as he stated. However, the creator of Ethereum urged his benefactors to donate the money directly to a charity of their choice instead of sending it to his address.

“I appreciate all the memecoins that donate portions of their supply directly to charity. Anything that gets sent to me gets donated to charity too (thanks moodeng! The 10B from today is going to anti-airborne-disease tech), though I truly prefer if you guys send to charity directly, maybe even make a DAO and get your community directly engaged in the decisions and process. I've said before that I think the best thing for memecoins is if they can be maximally positive-sum for the world, so it's great to see moments when that actually happens!”

Vitalik's recent activity renewed the optimism among crypto commentators on X, who were starting to look at Ethereum's rivals. This comes after a series of sales from Buterin himself, the Ethereum Foundation, and other long-term ETH investors.