Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin Reveals How Hard It Was To Dump Shiba Inu

One of the most important events in the history of Shiba Inu was when Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin had sold billions worth of SHIB tokens that were sent to him by the founders of the meme coin. It inevitably was the major catalyst for the price rally of the meme coin that followed not too long after, making it the second meme coin to reach the crypto top 10.

Although most in the crypto space know of the tokens being sent to Buterin and the subsequent billion-dollar donation made to an Indian COVID relief fund, not a lot is known of how the founder was able to sell the tokens. At this point, Shiba Inu was still a relatively obscure cryptocurrency and was not listed on as many exchanges as it is now. The best way was to use a decentralized exchange.

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Buterin recently opened up about his interaction with the cryptocurrency and how selling it took jumping through so many hoops. He had been sent trillions of tokens in the transaction, which came out to almost half of the circulating. In the end, he had been able to sell the tokens for a couple of billion dollars. He recounts how he was able to do this on a recent podcast episode of UpOnly Podcast.

Selling Shiba Inu Made Me Feel Like James Bond

Recounting the elaborate process that it took to dump his Shiba Inu holdings, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin painted a picture that spanned across two countries and a new laptop to execute.

Firstly, the private keys to the wallet where the coins had been sent to were not entirely with Buterin. While he had a part of the keys with him, he explained that he had left the other part of the keys with his family in Canada. He then had to call up his family to send him their part of the private keys to him.

SHIB falls to $0.00002 | Source: SHIBUSD on TradingView.com

Next, Buterin had purchased a $300 laptop from Target to be used exclusively for this transaction. He further went on to download a QR code-generating program, which he had to scan with his phone and then copy to the laptop, which he then put into a etherscan.io/push Tx. After everything, he was eventually able to complete the transaction and move out the tokens.

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After the whole transaction was completed, Buterin had then immediately disconnected laptop from the internet.

Buterin described the whole process as being akin to a James Bond movie. He said the experience was both scary and fun given that it was more money than he had ever had. “It was scary and involved a procedure that would probably make a good plot for a James Bond movie eventually,” Buterin said.

Featured image from Nairametrics, chart from TradingView.com