Vitalik Buterin Says He Would Handle Shiba Inu Donations Differently

Vitalik Buterin says he did not expect his Shiba Inu donations to reach hundreds of millions of dollars. In a recent interview, the Ethereum co-founder said that if he had known how things would turn out, he would have made different choices about the tokens.

The original plan

Buterin recalled that the Shiba Inu team sent half of the total token supply to a public wallet. The value of those tokens rose quickly. The team sold part of the holdings and got about $70 million worth of Ethereum, he said. Buterin donated a large share of that amount to the Against Malaria Foundation, which works on malaria prevention.

Selling everything was not simple. Market liquidity was not deep enough to move all the tokens at once. Buterin sent a large part of the remaining SHIB to CryptoRelief, an Indian pandemic relief group, and to the Future of Life Institute.

Donations grew larger than expected

At the time, Buterin thought the groups might raise a little over $20 million by selling the tokens. That estimate was far off. He said CryptoRelief raised about $470 million. He did not know the exact figure for the Future of Life Institute, but put it somewhere between $400 million and $600 million.

The gap between his estimate and the final numbers is the core of his point. The money was real and large. Its use also mattered. Buterin said the Future of Life Institute initially worked on several risks, including biological threats, nuclear war and artificial intelligence. It later focused on AI policy. He said he did not support some of the group’s activities. He also said his proposal to direct resources to other areas was not accepted.

A Dogecoin side note

In the same interview, Buterin talked about an early Dogecoin bet. He put in about $25,000, and the position later grew to more than $10 million. He did not present that as a lesson for other investors. It came across more as a memory from a strange period in crypto.

Perhaps the main takeaway is simple: large token gifts can become much bigger than the sender expects. That can be good for charities. It can also create hard questions about control, liquidity and what donors thought they were supporting. Buterin’s comments suggest he is still working through those questions.