Vitalik Sells 200 ETH of Memecoins to Donate to Charity

Ethereum Co-founder Vitalik Buterin donated 200 ETH to charity today, raising funds from an assortment of animal-themed coins that were sent to him over the last year.

Buterin donated the funds, worth a total of $530,000 at the time of the donation, to the Effective Altruism Funds (Animal Welfare Fund).

After donating, Vitalik posted on social media, “charity donation done, covering all animal coins from the past year or so!” He continued, calling for communities to donate to charities directly instead of sending him tokens, saying, “it’s 2024, we can start doing more sophisticated public goods fun-ding”.

Memecoin developers and communities have made it a habit to send spare tokens to notable wallets of prominent figures in the space. Sometimes it is meant as a charitable donation to include that person in their community, other times it is meant as a malicious marketing tool to manipulate traders into believing that “Vitalik invested in our token.”

As a well-known fan of the late shiba inu Kabosu, popularized by the Doge meme, Vitalik’s wallets are often gifted dog-related memecoins. Similarly, a wallet that is believed to belong to Donald Trump often receives various amounts of Trump and MAGA related memecoins.

Buterin’s choice to donate the funds backs up his stance that there can be a more “positive sum” version of memecoin trading.