Vitalik Buterin cashes out his free shitcoins, on-chain data shows
Ethereum co-founder and famous computer scientist Vitalik Buterin has reportedly sold some of his free shitcoins, according to on-chain data from Etherscan.
Ethereum co-founder and famous computer scientist Vitalik Buterin is selling his stakes on shitcoins (crypto projects with no real utility) and meme coins (crypto projects driven mainly through hype from the crypto community).
Lookonchain initially identified the sale on Twitter, citing the data from Etherscan, an on-chain data service provider.
According to Etherscan, Vitalik’s publicly known wallet address had sold 50 billion MOPS tokens, equating to 1.25 ETH (approximately $2,000) when the transaction was complete. He further cashed out 10 billion CULT tokens for 58 ETH (roughly $91,000) and 500 trillion SHIK tokens for 380 ETH (approximately $600,000).
According to real-time data from CoinGecko, the sell-off has impacted the prices of these coins differently. MOPS is up over 1500% in the past 24 hours.
On the contrary, CULT and SHIK prices have displayed bearish changes in the same period. Coingecko shows that CULT and SHIK have been down 8.3% and 62.8% in the past 24 hours, allegedly due to Vitalik’s move.
Some users on Twitter have mocked Vitalik’s sale of these tokens claiming that it would trigger bleeding market prices in the wake of the ongoing bearish market sentiment.
Vitalik is a frequent victim of shitcoin and meme coin airdrops
Crypto airdrops have been a common phenomenon in the crypto ecology, especially among emerging projects.
While some projects require users to have a specific cryptocurrency in their wallets when a snapshot is taken to be eligible for an airdrop, others blindly send a huge chunk of their tokens to crypto figures to promote the coin and pump its prices.
Vitalik has been a frequent victim of the latter. He first received a significant chunk of the total shiba inu (SHIB) supply, one of the most popular meme coins in the crypto ecosphere. The Shiba Inu community (Shib Army) announced that Vitalik held some of the tokens, increasing the hype around SHIB even further.
