Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin destroys 410 trillion Shiba Inu coins

Less than a week after donating over $1 billion in cryptocurrency to the India Covid Relief Fund and a range of other charities, the world's youngest known crypto billionaire has burned over US$6.7billion ($9.29 billion) worth of the Shiba Inu coins.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin sent a whopping 410,241,996,771,871.894771826174755464 coins to a dead wallet address – effectively destroying them and now accounting for 41 per cent of the total SHIB in circulation.

"I've decided to burn 90 per cent of the remaining Shiba tokens in my wallet," Buterin – whose holdings in SHIB were gifted to him by the coin's founders as a marketing tactic when it launched – wrote in a note alongside the transaction.

"The remaining 10 per cent will be sent to a (not yet decided) charity with similar values to cryptorelief (preventing the large-scale loss of life) but with more long-term orientation. Covid is a big problem now, but it's important to think about the longer-term future too!"

The 27-year-old – who was born near Moscow and co-founded Bitcoin Magazine when he was only 18 – added that "simply holding the remaining coins in the 0xab58 wallet forever was never an option".

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum Foundation and Bitcoin Magazine. Photo / Getty Images

"For security reasons alone they would have to be moved to a better wallet eventually, and any transaction I make would get interpreted as an action. So … may as well do the useful thing immediately," he wrote.

"I've actually been impressed by how the dog token communities have treated the recent donation! Plenty of dog people have shown their generosity and willingness to not just focus on their own profits but also be interested in making the world as a whole better. I support all who are earnestly doing that.

"But for anyone making coins (or daos, or whatever else) in the future, PLEASE DO NOT GIVE ME COINS ON POWER IN YOUR PROJECT WITHOUT MY 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)."

Another message for the #SHIBArmy, the strongest community in crypto. pic.twitter.com/874pnUPNmQ

— Shib (@Shibtoken) May 16, 2021

Following his transaction, SHIB released a statement of its own, writing it was the "second time SHIB has made history in the last week".

"Despite the fact that VB allowed us to be part of the single most generous act in cryptocurrency history, we have seen even long-term Shib holders become paperhands and dump millions and millions of dollars over the course of a few days," they wrote.

Buterin's move means that SHIB's value could now increase, now that the circulating supply of it has been halved, making each individual coin technically rarer.