Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin sent SHIBA INU meme cryptocurrency tokens worth $6.7 billion to a burn address. SHIB owners now accuse Buterin of the token price collapse.

The popularity and growth of Dogecoin provoked the emergence of many similar dog-themed tokens like SHIBA INU, AKITA, etc. As a marketing ploy to popularize their product, the SHIB developers in early May sent 50% of the total SHIBA INU supply (quadrillion coins) to the address of Vitalik Buterin. That means, they gave him about 500 trillion SHIBA INU coins for free. Thus, Buterin unwittingly became the largest owner of the token. But Vitalik clearly did not appreciate their step.

Last week, he donated 50 trillion SHIB tokens (about $1.2 billion at that time) to a fund to help India fight the COVID-19 pandemic, created by Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal. On May 16, he withdrew more than 410 trillion SHIB tokens from the Uniswap liquidity pool and sent them to a dead blockchain address, thereby permanently removing them from circulation.

“I’ve decided to burn 90% of the remaining shiba tokens in my wallet. The remaining 10% will be sent to a (not yet decided) charity with similar values to cryptorelief (preventing large-scale loss of life) but with a more long-term orientation,” he said in a note attached to another transaction at the same time. Buterin also said he would prefer cryptocurrency devs to donate to charities instead of him. “I don't *want* to be a locus of power of that kind,” he said.

In addition, Vitalik also got rid of AKITA and ELON tokens by sending them as charitable contributions to other charity organizations. The withdrawal of a large amount of SHIB from the liquidity pool on Uniswap led to a drop in the token rate. And many users saw Buterin's fault in this. First, he slashed the coin by selling a large amount of SHIB tokens to fund the India Relief Fund. Secondly, he deprived the pool of liquidity on Uniswap, which created problems for the token holders, who decided to get rid of the coin after Buterin did.

SHIBA INU, which calls itself the DOGE killer and was launched in April 2021, surged nearly 900% since the beginning of May, reaching a record high of $0.00003791 on May 10. It was listed on major exchanges such as Binance and Huobi.