410 Trillion Shiba Inu (SHIB) Burn by Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin Might Be Biggest of All Time: Details

Conor Grogan, a director at Coinbase, recently took to Twitter to provide a list of the most expensive crypto-transactions-by-chain that he was aware of. According to the list he supplied, the Ethereum network’s $4.4 billion move between Binance wallets on May 7, 2022, took the top spot.

Did not include transactions to burn addresses; if I did, @VitalikButerin burn of $7B in SHIB would probably be #1 of all time

Note: Cardano, Solana, Avalanche, Optimism, and others not included due to challenges navigating blockchain infrastructure there (Wen @ArkhamIntel?) pic.twitter.com/WXXeeNtqhp

— Conor (@jconorgrogan) March 26, 2023

In the second spot, there was a $1.94 billion move by Binance to cold storage on Feb. 22.

In June 2018, Tron founder Justin Sun made a huge $1.46 billion transfer to the Huobi exchange. This took fourth place. Then in April 2020, $1.1 billion worth BTC moved from Bitfinex for the refill of its exchange hot wallet.

Among these noteworthy transactions is a transfer of $65.53 million worth of XRP from Bitso to Bithumb.

While all of these transactions have a place in history, none stands out compared to Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin’s massive 410 trillion Shiba Inu burn.

Grogan stated that if transactions to burn addresses are taken into consideration, Vitalik Buterin’s $7 billion might be the biggest of all time. This even surpasses the $4.4 billion ETH move between Binance wallets previously stated. Grogan also says he did not include $13 billion worth of BETH burned back on June 7, 2022, in the list he provided for lack of clarity on the transaction.

Vitalik Buterin’s massive 410 trillion SHIB burn

In May 2021, Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin burned 90% of his SHIB holdings, totaling around $7 billion, saying he did not want to be a locus of power of that kind. Buterin had been unwillingly gifted half of SHIB’s total supply.

A stash of over 410 trillion tokens was sent to a dead blockchain address in a single transaction, removing them from circulation.

The remaining 10% was earmarked for charitable causes by the Ethereum co-creator.