Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin Offloads Nearly A Million In Memecoins To Benefit Charities — Dogecoin's Sister Coin NEIRO Plunges 3% After Sale

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH), sold meme coins gifted to him by project creators on Monday and allocated the proceeds toward his biotechnology charity Kanro.

What Happened: Buterin swapped notable coins like Neiro (NEIRO), Shiba Inu (CRYPTO: SHIB)-inspired ESTEE, Marvin Inu (MARVIN), and several others for over $940,000 in stablecoin USD Coin (CRYPTO: USDC), according to on-chain tracking platform Spot On Chain.

Out of this, about 916,000 USDC was sent to a wallet belonging to his philanthropic fund, Kanro, established to address COVID-19 and other pandemic-related challenges.

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

— Spot On Chain (@spotonchain) January 6, 2025

The biggest liquidation was that of NEIRO, a dog-themed meme coin inspired by the sister of Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) mascot Kabosu. About 70 million NEIRO tokens, worth over $74,000, were offloaded.

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

See Also: MAGA Meme Coin Surges 20%, Boosting Donald Trump’s Crypto Portfolio $11.9M

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

The cryptocurrency mogul has frequently asked projects not to send him unsolicited meme tokens, a tried-and-tested strategy employed by nascent projects to pique investors' attention by leveraging on his brand value. Instead, he urged them to allocate the holdings to charities directly..

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

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