Vitalik Buterin Offloads Shiba Inu Themed Memecoin Post Airdrop

3 months ago 30

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Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin offloaded his entire holdings of Neiro tokens, a Shiba Inu themed memecoin. The move came shortly after the Neiro project team airdropped 17.145 billion tokens to his Ethereum address, making him the temporary largest holder of the coin. This amount represented about 4% of the total supply of Neiro, valued at approximately $130,000 at the time of the transfer.

Buterin Dumps Shiba Inu Themed Memecoin

According to real-time transaction data from Lookonchain, Buterin converted his holdings into Ethereum, netting 44.53 ETH, equivalent to roughly $112,500. The analytics provider detailed the transaction on X, stating, “Vitalik Buterin sold all 17.15B Neiro for 44.53 ETH ($112.5K) 1 hour ago. The Neiro team transferred 17.15B Neiro (4.08% of the total supply) to vitalik.eth after the launch.”

Subsequent to the sale, the Neiro project team addressed Buterin via an post published on their X page, requesting that he consider donating a portion of the proceeds to charity. The message read: “Hey Vitalik Buterin, we see that you sold your Neiro bag. Our humble ask is that you donate part of the proceeds to a stray dog shelter. And thank you for building our playground!”

The Nairo team highlighted that they themselves have donated $1,600 to the Chibawan stray dog shelter in Japan, which was the home of the memecoin’s Shiba Inu dog called Neiro before she was adopted by the owner of Kabosu.

For context, Neiro is a memecoin modeled after Kabosu, the real-life sister of the Shiba Inu dog made famous by the Doge meme. Launched on the Ethereum blockchain, Neiro aims to capitalize on the cultural success of Dogecoin. The project emphasizes its community-driven approach and has actively engaged in charitable activities, including donations to animal shelters.

Notably, the narrative surrounding the token airdrop and Buterin’s subsequent action has been fraught with contention, particularly concerning media coverage. A response from Neiro’s official account criticized a report by Cointelegraph, highlighting inaccuracies and alleging a lack of journalistic integrity.

The statement refuted several points made in the article, clarifying that the token distribution was not an organized promotional stunt but rather a decision by a developer before the project was community-driven.

“We did not ‘attempt to gain credibility on Aug. 4, after airdropping 4% of its supply to the Ethereum co-founder to claim he was the largest holder’. We did not airdrop anything. Those tokens were airdropped by the dev who originally rugged before the project was taken over by the community. This was not a “PR stunt” meticulously organized by the community, it was pure happenstance,” the NEIRO team remarked.

Furthermore, they stressed that Neiro is a community-funded project without ties to market manipulators or promotional entities, contrasting themselves with other projects that might use such tactics. They added: “We are in fact, a community project, with no ties to the original dev who abandoned it just a few hours after its launch. That we are only funded by the community, and we employ no market makers, bots, or “KOLs” to artificially pump the prices, unlike some other Neiro tokens out there – this is evident on-chain.”

At press time, NEIRO traded at $0.1246.