Buterin, 27, was born in Kolomna, Russia, but moved to Canada with his family as a child. He was an early convert to crypto, co-founding Bitcoin Magazine in 2011. Two years later, he received a $100,000 fellowship from Peter Thiel, allowing him to drop out of college and work on Ethereum full-time, launching the network in 2014. Buterin didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.
Buterin’s celebrity in the world of cryptocurrencies led to him being given various coins as a sort of promotion tactic. When Shiba Inu was created late last year, half of all coins in circulation were placed into Buterin’s digital wallet.
Its value was limited, like many of the other hundreds of tokens he owns, until the sudden rally in Dogecoin that began last month spread to the Shiba Inu coin.
Massive Gains
Shiba Inu coin’s remarkable surge over the past month means Buterin’s remaining holdings are worth an incredible $9.1 billion on paper, even after the recent pullback. That’s far more than the $1.2 billion of Ethereum he owns, although the price would almost certainly crash further if he sold.
Browning, the retail investor in Indiana, said he wasn’t surprised that Buterin ended up getting rid of his Shiba Inu coin and that it was a bad idea for him to have been given so much of it in the first place. In theory, taking half of the coins off the market made it more valuable, but it also made Shiba investors beholden to the founder of another coin, he said.
But it’s hard to criticize what he’s done with it so far, Browning said. “If you’re a holder and you’re really still against what he’s done, you look unsympathetic to Covid, unsympathetic to people of India, you almost look like you’re just a Gordon Gekko-type monger.”
-With assistance from Matthew Leising.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.