Ethereum Co-Founder Burns $6.6 Billion Worth of Shiba Tokens

On Sunday, May 16, one of Ethereum's founders, Vitalik Buterin, burned approximately $6.6 billion worth in Shiba Inu tokens, some 410.24 trillion tokens, reports Bitcoin.com.

Nicknamed the DOGECOIN KILLER, the Shiba Inu token (SHIB) is a new ERC-20 token project that came to life after the Shiba Inu meme-inspired cryptocurrency, Dogecoin, made waves in the cryptocurrency world. As the Shiba Inu token team themselves point out, the "ERC-20 ONLY token can remain well under a penny and still outpace Dogecoin in a small amount of time (relatively speaking)."

The new token has gathered some speed, even turning people into billionaires overnight since its recent creation. As Bitcoin.com notes, the SHIB is exchanging for $0.00001617 per unit, and went up nearly by two percent on Monday. There are also currently some 497 trillion SHIB in circulation as of this writing. 

This all comes after Buterin, who recently became the world's youngest cryptocurrency billionaire, burned 410.24 trillion SHIB on Sunday, May 16, essentially removing some 40 percent of all Shiba Inu tokens from the market. 

Buterin kept a hold on roughly 10 percent of his tokens, which he says he plans on giving to (a yet undisclosed) charity.

Writing about his decision to burn his tokens, Buterin said via the transaction hash "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."

What vb said pic.twitter.com/RPohnWE8Em

— VB Goat (@icebucket95) May 16, 2021

His entire message was copied and published by someone who goes by the name of VB Goat on Twitter. There, Buterin also took the time to let people know that he no longer wants to receive any further coins or power in cryptocurrencies' projects without his prior consent. He explained that he doesn't "want to be a locus of power of that kind."

It turns out Buterin had been sent a large number of SHIB in its inception days, as a plan to market it, reports The Independent. His crypto wallet is public, so Buterin explained that he would always be moving the coins out of it, but that burning them would speed up the process.

What is burning tokens?

When cryptocurrency tokens or coins are burned, they are permanently removed from the circulating supply on purpose, explains Coin Market Cap. This is different to when coins or tokens are removed by mistake, or if they're unintentionally sent to an address without an owner or where the wallet can't be accessed. 

It's quite a normal transaction, says Coin Market Cap, which is typically carried out by the development team of the actual cryptocurrency. The most common way to burn crypto tokens or coins is by sending them to what's called an "eater address," which still publicly shows the balance on the blockchain, but noone can access them.