Vitalik Buterin Sells $700K Price of Airdropped Tokens, Inflicting Huge Value Drops

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has made headlines as soon as once more after occurring a promoting spree of airdropped tokens that he by no means requested for. The overall worth of the tokens bought amounted to just about $700,000, with a few of the tokens’ costs plummeting following Buterin’s choice to promote.

In accordance with Etherscan, Buterin’s pockets offloaded 500 trillion SHIKOKU (SHIK) for 380.3 ETH ($595,448), 10 billion Cult DAO (CULT) for 58.1 ETH ($91,021), and 50 billion Mops (MOPS) for 1.25 ETH ($1,950) on March 7. As Buterin’s holdings represented a big portion of the circulating provide for a few of these tokens, the gross sales resulted in large worth drops.

The biggest worth drop was recorded by SHIK, which noticed an 86% decline following Buterin’s sale, in line with CoinMarketCap information. The overall circulating provide of SHIK is 1 quadrillion, with the five hundred trillion beforehand held by Buterin representing 50% of the present provide.

This isn’t the primary time that Buterin has bought airdropped tokens. In Might 2021, he initiated an analogous offload that resulted in worth drops of 40% for Shiba Inu (SHIB) and 90% for Dogelon Mars (ELON).

Whereas some members of the cryptocurrency neighborhood expressed frustration at Buterin’s choice to promote, others instructed that it was motivated by tax implications. Airdrops are topic to earnings tax in most international locations, and receiving a considerable amount of them may end in important tax obligations.

Buterin confirmed that he owned the pockets in a 2018 tweet after being accused of hoarding 75% of the availability of Ether with fellow Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin in the course of the token’s pre-mining sale.