Key Takeaways

• Vitalik Buterin has burned just over 410 trillion of the SHIB tokens in his wallet, explaining that he does not want to be a “locus of power.”
• Buterin recently received a large portion of SHIB and other dog-branded tokens to his Ethereum wallet.
• Buterin sent $1 billion worth of SHIB and other tokens to various charitable organizations last week.

After sending $1 billion worth of SHIB to India’s COVID-19 relief fund last week, Vitalik Buterin has burned 41% of the token’s circulating supply. 
Vitalik Buterin Burns SHIB Supply 
Vitalik Buterin spent part of his weekend destroying dog coins. 
The Ethereum co-founder sent 410,241,996,771,871.894771826174755464 SHIB to a burn address last night, which equated to around 41% of the circulating supply. 
Buterin had received large amounts of SHIB and other so-called “dog tokens” to his Ethereum wallet. His wallet is known by many crypto followers, so several projects have opted to send a supply of their tokens to his address in the past, likely as a guerilla marketing tactic. 

Many dog-themed crypto projects have received heightened attention in recent weeks amid Dogecoin’s surge. The Dogecoin derivatives were unwittingly placed under the spotlight last Wednesday when Buterin began exchanging the tokens he’d received for ETH and sending the coins to various charities. During the philanthropic spree, he sent 50.69 trillion SHIB to India’s Covid-Crypto Relief Fund. The donation had a notional value of $1.1 billion. 
After burning the SHIB tokens last night, Buterin posted an onchain message, explaining that he does not want to receive any tokens without consent. “PLEASE DO NOT GIVE ME COINS OR POWER IN YOUR PROJECT WITHOUT MY CONSENT!” he said. “I don’t *want* to be a locus of power of that kind.” Buterin also applauded “the dog token communities” on their willingness to support charitable causes and urged other projects to consider giving to charities. The full message read: 

“I’ve decided to burn 90% of the remaining shiba tokens in my wallet. The remaining 10% will be sent to a (not yet decided) charity with similar values to cryptorelief (preventing large-scale loss of life) but with a more long-term orientation. Covid is a big problem now, but it’s important to think about the longer term future too!

Simply holding the remaining coins in the 0xab58 wallet forever was never an option; for security reasons alone they would have to be moved to a better wallet eventually, and any transaction I make would get interpreted as an action. So… may as well just do the useful thing immediately.

I’ve actually been impressed by how the dog token communities have treated the recent donations! Plenty of dog people have shown their generosity and their willingness to not just focus on their own profits but also be interested in making the world as a whole better. I support all who are earnestly doing that.

But for anyone making coins (or daos, or whatever else) in the future, PLEASE DO NOT GIVE ME COINS OR POWER IN YOUR PROJECT WITHOUT MY CONSENT! I don’t *want* to be a locus of power of that kind. Better to just print the coins into the hands of a worthy charity directly (though do talk to them first).” 

Shiba Inu posted a statement on Twitter following the act, declaring that “it is only the beginning” for the project. 

It’s not yet clear what Buterin intends to do with his remaining coins. Buterin has been active since posting the message last night: his transaction history shows that he’s spent Monday morning swapping LabraDoodle’s LOODL tokens and other coins for wrapped ETH on Uniswap. 
Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this feature owned ETH, FLI, and several other cryptocurrencies. They also had exposure to UNI in a cryptocurrency index.