Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin has exited meme coins yet again, selling two different tokens in just a few hours, as per Onchain Lens. On-chain data shows the famous crypto developer offloaded 150 billion Puppies tokens for 28.58 ETH equivalent to about $114,000 and 1 billion ERC20 tokens for $13,900 in USDC.
The sums are small in the grand scheme of Ethereum, but the action is all too familiar. Back in 2021, Buterin got billions of Shiba Inu (SHIB) tokens from the project’s creators, then sent a big chunk of it to India’s relief fund and burned the rest.
That decision sent the SHIB community into a state of shock, wiped out part of its supply and, despite the sell-off pressure, became one of the biggest hype stories of that bull run, pushing SHIB deeper into the public eye and cementing its place in crypto history.
Will Shiba Inu coin story repeat itself?
It remains to be seen if this week’s sales will show the same pattern. Buterin doesn’t keep meme tokens in his wallets for long. ERC20 took a 70% hit after his transactions, and Puppies, which had been in the spotlight recently, faced extra scrutiny once the sales were recorded on the blockchain and spread across trading groups.
SHIB/USD by CoinMarketCap
The upshot is always the same: Whenever Vitalik Buterin gets meme coins, he ends up selling them, and the market reacts straight away.
For traders, it’s just another reminder that tokens linked, even indirectly, to Ethereum’s creator don’t guarantee long-term holding, no matter how much short-term hype surrounds them.