The Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has admitted that Shiba Inu (SHIB) “massively” outperformed his earlier expectations for the project.
Buterin disclosed this while reacting to a statement from Nathan Young, a Web Designer and Director at Frostwork. Young spotlighted the crypto assets held by Future of Life Institute (FLI), a non-profit focused on AI research, noting that he never believed the organization’s crypto balance amounted to much.
For context, FLI was one of the beneficiaries of Vitalik Buterin’s Shiba Inu donations. Recall that the Ethereum founder received half of the entire Shiba Inu supply from Ryoshi, SHIB’s anonymous founder. Buterin burned 410 trillion tokens and sent the rest to non-profits in May 2021.
One of these non-profits was FLI. Nathan Young had believed that the Shiba Inu tokens received by FLI were valued at low prices, but information from a filing revealed that their worth actually amounted to $665 million.
Buterin Expected SHIB to Crash
Responding to Young’s disclosure, Buterin noted that the FLI case is similar to what he observed with CryptoRelief, an Indian charity. It bears mentioning that Buterin also donated his SHIB tokens to CryptoRelief.
He sent 50.6 trillion SHIB to CryptoRelief on May 12, 2021. The worth of the tokens at the time stood at $1.2 billion. Interestingly, in his latest disclosure, Buterin revealed that he initially believed Shiba Inu would crash shortly after he received the tokens from Ryoshi.
It's the same situation as with cryptorelief: I quickly sent a pile of SHIB, thinking it would surely drop 100x in a few days so I had to act fast, and expecting they would be able to cash out at most like $10-25m. But of course SHIB massively outperformed my expectations…
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) March 26, 2024
Notably, SHIB had already recorded a massive price rally before Buterin donated the tokens. However, the Ethereum co-founder expected the asset to crash within a short period, as is customary with memecoins. He had to move fast and donate these tokens before the expected price collapse.
Buterin noted that he was expecting CryptoRelief to at least be able to salvage $10 to $25 million from the donation before any drop in SHIB’s price. However, his expectations did not materialize, as Shiba Inu continued to rally after the donation, eventually hitting its all-time high of $0.00008845 in October 2021, five months later.
Shiba Inu Exceeds Expectations
“But of course, SHIB massively outperformed my expectations,” Buterin disclosed in his recent remarks, calling attention to how the canine-themed project defied the odds, pointing to its eventual failure. Three years later, Shiba Inu still retains relevance, battling to seal its spot among the top 10.
While SHIB’s worth did drop by 30% shortly after Buterin’s donation to CryptoRelief, the token bounced back. At the all-time high value in October 2021, the assets were worth $4.42 billion. If the charity organization had held onto the tokens until now, they’d still hold $1.57 billion.
Vitalik Buterin has consistently underestimated the meme market due to its lack of utility. In 2022, the Ethereum founder was surprised at the massive amount of Shiba Inu tokens held by Crypto.com. The Shiba Inu project is now gradually tilting toward utility, constantly exceeding expectations from industry leaders like Buterin.
