Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin destroys 90% of his Shiba Inu holdings - almost half the coin's circulation

• Vitalik Buterin burnt 90% of his Shiba Inu assets, over 40% of all coins in circulation.
• Buterin said he plans to donate the remaining 10% of the coins he owns to charity.
• He previously donated Shiba Inu coins worth $1 billion to a COVID-19 relief fund for India.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin burned 90% of his Shiba Inu holdings and will donate the remaining 10% according to a note he left on an ether transaction made on Sunday evening.

Over 40% of the coin's total circulation have thereby been taken out of the market.

Burning and donating the coins was the only option, Buterin said. He'd previously been given 50% of all Shiba Inu tokens by the coin's creators, said. It was the only way to avoid his transactions in Shiba Inu being interpreted as actions, or indicators on his part, he said.

Buterin also urged coin creators not to send large amounts of tokens to individuals or charities without their 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)," he wrote in his note.

The burned coins have effectively been taken out of circulation - "burning" a crypto token means sending it to a public address that is inaccessible, where it will then lay unused.

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More than 40% of Shiba Inu tokens have now been burned, which amounts to around 410 trillion coins worth around $7 billion. Shiba Inu rose by over 40% to $0.00001953 after Buterin's statement. Based on CoinMarketCap data, the coin was last up 0.6% in the 24 hours to 08:17 E.T., trading at $0.0000161.

SHIB is a small, dogecoin-inspired token that gained 1,000% last week. Its website describes it as an "experiment in decentralized spontaneous community building". Binance's Indian platform listed the SHIB coin late last week.

Buterin said he had not yet decided to which charity he would donate the remaining 10% of his Shiba Inu tokens. He said he wanted to support an organization that aimed to prevent "large-scale loss of life" in the long term.

Last week, Buterin donated Shiba Inu coins worth $1 billion to CryptoRelief, a crypto-based charity fund set up by Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of the Ethereum platform Polygon, to support India in its fight against a deadly wave of COVID-19. Buterin said he would not donate the remaining Shiba Inu tokens to the same fund, as it was important to think about the future.

"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." Buterin said.