Vitalik Buterin Sells Meme Coins Gifted to Him by Project Creators, Allocates Proceeds to Charity Kanro

Ethereum ETH/USD co-founder Vitalik Buterin sold meme coins gifted to him by the project creators on Monday and donated the proceeds to his biotechnology charity Kanro.

Buterin swapped several notable coins, including Neiro (NEIRO), Shiba Inu (SHIB/USD)-inspired ESTEE, Marvin Inu (MARVIN), and others, for over $940,000 in stablecoin USD Coin (USDC/USD), as noted by on-chain tracking platform Spot On Chain.

Out of the total proceeds, about 916,000 USDC was transferred to a wallet belonging to his philanthropic fund, Kanro, which was set up to address challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerin) sold several of his free #memecoins for $940.9K in $USDC and $ETH today!

Notable sales include:

• 70M $NEIRO → 74.1K $USDC

• 63.1M $ESTEE → 69.8K $USDC

• 46.5M $MARVIN → 69.2K $USDC

• 500.2K $EBULL → 67.6K $USDC

• 100K $MSTR → 61.5K… pic.twitter.com/VDWXID2xtG

The largest liquidation was that of NEIRO, a dog-themed meme coin inspired by the sister of Dogecoin (DOGE/USD) mascot Kabosu. About 70 million NEIRO tokens, valued at over $74,000, were sold.

The sale caused the token’s price to drop by over 3% in the last 24 hours. In contrast, ESTEE and MARVIN both gained 28.66% and 14.50%, respectively, in the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.

Buterin’s charitable inclinations are also well-known. In December, he adopted the viral baby hippo named Moo Deng, allocating 88 Ethereum for her welfare and her family. He also donated billions of dollars worth of Shiba Inu for COVID-19 relief in India.

The cryptocurrency pioneer has often asked projects not to send him unsolicited meme tokens, a strategy employed by new projects to quickly grab investors' attention by leveraging his brand value. Instead, he urged them to allocate the holdings to charities directly.

Price Action: At the time of writing, Ethereum was trading at $3,685.58, up 0.55% in the last 24 hours, according to data from Benzinga Pro.